Fighting Necrons

Having been asked for a game from a Necron player and having a little look through their codex I am pretty scared of what he might be able to do. Their vehicles look shockingly hard to destroy with our lack of anti tank. They have quite a bit of deadly firepower as well. How would I go about dealing with these mechanical fiends?

A full mech necron list can be pretty nasty but most of their shooting is 24" range so for the first couple of turns pull back and shoot the most dangerous targets with raiders, ravagers and anything else that can sit at 36" then moving up to a weakened section and overpowering it while the rest of his army has to move to get back in range.

However the more common necron list is spamming fliers. I have had decent success in moving up as fast as possible and hitting the small amount of units on the table and letting the fliers fly over me but I have only come up against this style of list 2 or 3 times.
A different one is 3 large squads of wraiths with destroyer lord or 2 running up and chopping up as much as they can. I haven't come up against this
Others who have come up against necron flier spam and wraith spam more than myself can give more detailed ideas on what to do probably.

Here is what my friend takes at roughly 2k

2 overlords tooled out for combat with command barge
8ish crypteks with the melts staff

4 squads of 8 warriors with ghost arks. The crypteks go with these

A doomsday ark
2/3 I can't remember annihilation barges

This isn't his exact list I don't think but it's close enough for you to get the idea.

Most of its threats are short to midrange fire.
Beware the lords they get in your face quite quickly and are a pain to get rid of and the annihilation barges rip our transports and infantry a new one so they are a priority.

Not sure if this style of list is common, though I would say not. It giggles at s7/8 spam shots which is quite common at the moment thanks to tau and serpent eldar

The barges are indeed very hard to destroy as they are all AV13 unless you get behind them. Assualt is definitely the best option here. I've destroyed 2 Ghost Arks with my Grotesques and my Beast Pack has accounted for several Annihilation Barges. Just be wary of trying to outrange Annihilation Barges. Even though they are not fast skimmers they can still pour out tremendous firepower after moving 12" due to the extremely powerful combination of Tesla Weaponry and Twin-linking. Also be careful not to position your units too close to each other as they Tesla Arc can be deadly as I found out last week. Lost a Venom and an entire squad of Wyches to an Annihilation Barge that didn't even fire at them! Also conceded First Blood

Based on your advice I'm thinking DL Ravagers and wyches in venoms/raiders. An archon and incubi
may also work quite well.

I wouldn't say we have a lack of anti-tank. Perhaps we don't have all the flashy options of some (although if you consider the Eldar list to be part of our own, which it nearly is, we do gain quite a bit there), but we have what is necessary, and we have plenty of it.

The special rules to make a note of -
Quantum Shielding (or something like that). Most, if not all vehicles, have a higher AV (13 is common) until taking a Pen hit. Then it drops to 11. This is actually a waste against us, so that's awesome.
Tesla - 6's to hit Triplicate, even on snapfires. So yes, they can put out a scary amount of fire on the move.
Tesla Arc - units within 6" have a chance to get a few hits on them. Clumping is dangerous, but I think it also affects his units.

Outside of this, they're pretty straightforward. Make sure you understand reanimation, and what needs to be done to insure the standard protocols, and also the Ever living protocols, get ignored (the first is by wiping out the entire unit one way or another - they don't get to roll then, the second is a touch more complicated, but involves surrounding the "token" completely).
The vast majority of their shooting is 24". If you're a fan of Night Shields they will cripple him. Even if not you can skirt most of his shooting (just be wary of anything that can move 12" and fire effectively - and remember Tesla gives a new perspective on "effective").

I don't think list choices, other than 'smart ones' matter so much as the tactics used. Focusing on a target becomes more important due to Reanimation, so be aware of what your units should be able to do and plan targets accordingly.

Depends what the list is. Necrons have very little in the way of long ranged fire power. In fact, I think the Doomsday Ark has the only weapon with a range greater than 24 inches. Their vehicles, while tough against everyone else, are comparatively weak against Lance and Haywire weapons. Most are also open topped.

In my experience, it all boils down to focus firing down Necron units. Reanimation Protocols only work if the unit is alive at the end of the phase. If you are worrying about a Scarabs, just remember that STR 6 weapons inflict Instant Death. Aside from they're fliers and really lame close combat wargear, they're not that bad.

Necrons is my primary army (DE and Orks are secondary armies for me).

A few things to be aware of when fighting Necrons:

- Only 3 guns in the codex have a greater than 24" range, only 1 has longer than 36" and that's only if it doesn't move.

- All but 1 Vehicle (and flyers) have Quantum Shielding which gives +2 AV on Front and Side - making them 13/13/11. This disappears once a Penetrating hit gets through.

- Like DE - pretty much all vehicles are open top and skimmers.

- Tesla is brutal even with AP -.

- Gauss weapons (standard on most units) auto-glance vehicles on a pen roll of a 6.

- Scarab swarms are a tarpit from hell for DE.

- Monoliths are large and AV14....but can only me 6". Ignore if you can.


With that said - there's a few things I've grown to dread in general as a Necron player. There's also tricks I've learned as a DE player that I feel like I would be decent counters to Necrons.

- Every Necron unit (sans 1) has I2 and thus are considered really poor in CC. The one exception to this are Wraiths since they can be upgraded to reduce you to I1. I lose more games from my troops getting swept in CC than anything else.

- Necrons don't like MC's. We don't have many guns S6+ so tend to rely on our snipers (deathmarks) to remove them. However, if a MC gets into a squad, it'll usually win.

- Haywire grenades (and blaster) circumvent our Quantum Shielding. Lance shots help to mitigate the Quantum Shielding as well due to the Lance special rule.

- Vehicle Target Priority should be Annihilation Barges then Ghost Arks. Barges dish out too much S7 firepower to not be the first target. Twin-linked and Tesla makes it dangerous against pretty much any unit in the game. Ghost Arks can repair fallen Warriors however, if you can CC the warriors and sweep them, there's nothing to add models back to.

Hope this helps. Necrons would be a tough fight; however, other than the vehicles, you can probably do decently well with a strategy similar to that of Space Marines.

I mainly play against necrons i have to say its hard to decide target priority on troops if lets say he has a 12 man warrior squad that your raider just killed 11. but do you take the other shots from lets say a venoms splinter cannon and waste it fireing on one model so the unit dosent stand back up or do you try to destroy his destroyer/wraith pack.

Humnhapymeal wrote:

I mainly play against necrons i have to say its hard to decide target priority on troops if lets say he has a 12 man warrior squad that your raider just killed 11. but do you take the other shots from lets say a venoms splinter cannon and waste it fireing on one model so the unit dosent stand back up or do you try to destroy his destroyer/wraith pack.

In that particular circumstance I'd probably still try to destroy the last Warrior, wasteful as it seems. I may be slightly biased however due to my local Necrons player having an absolutely god-like ability to roll 5+ on reanimation protocols. Last game I played against him I knocked out 48 warriors over the course of the battle and 42 of them got back up (we counted). To be fair that was with a res orb but even so!!

He also makes about 90% of all 3++ saves he needs to roll so shooting the wraiths would be pointless for me too

Humnhapymeal wrote:

I mainly play against necrons i have to say its hard to decide target priority on troops if lets say he has a 12 man warrior squad that your raider just killed 11. but do you take the other shots from lets say a venoms splinter cannon and waste it fireing on one model so the unit dosent stand back up or do you try to destroy his destroyer/wraith pack.

I agree with Adhemar here.  It may seem wasteful; however, if you can completely wipe any squad of Necrons it'll remove them completely.  

There are only 4 units in the codex without Resurrection Protocol:
- Canoptek Wraiths
- Canoptek Spyders
- Canoptek Scarabs
- C'Tan Shards

Everything else can stand back up as long as there's still 1 model left in the unit that isn't fleeing.  Specifically to Warriors.  A single Warrior within 6" of a Ghost Ark will allow the Ghost Ark to return D3 warriors back to the squad.  So this too would be reason to remove the last one.  Ghost Arks lose a lot of effectiveness once the they are out of range of the warriors.

I'm pretty much of the opinion that one shoots a unit until it's gone and then move on to the next one. Especially with Necrons. But then again, I lose a lot!

Count Adhemar wrote:

I may be slightly biased however due to my local Necrons player having an absolutely god-like ability to roll 5+ on reanimation protocols. Last game I played against him I knocked out 48 warriors over the course of the battle and 42 of them got back up (we counted). To be fair that was with a res orb but even so!!

He also makes about 90% of all 3++ saves he needs to roll so shooting the wraiths would be pointless for me too

It would seem your necron player makes his daily sacrifice to the dice gods.

There's a little trick to necron resurrection - if a model is resurrected, it MUST be placed within two inches of a model that has not resurrected that phase; if it can't the model counts as destroyed and is removed from play. This means that if a twelve-man squad takes eleven casualties, it'll be nigh impossible to return more than five of his guys, and if he does, they'll be clumped together very nicely for, say, a Razorwing missile barrage
I've yet to meet another Necron player who has read the rule closely enough to notice this, so this should make things a little easier.

benedict121 wrote:

There's a little trick to necron resurrection - if a model is resurrected, it MUST be placed within two inches of a model that has not resurrected that phase; if it can't the model counts as destroyed and is removed from play. This means that if a twelve-man squad takes eleven casualties, it'll be nigh impossible to return more than five of his guys, and if he does, they'll be clumped together very nicely for, say, a Razorwing missile barrage
I've yet to meet another Necron player who has read the rule closely enough to notice this, so this should make things a little easier.

the way my buddy does it is that he lays down his models that "died" that phase and then rolls his reanimation after the shooting is done. then he just stands up the saved ones and removes the rest

benedict121 wrote:

There's a little trick to necron resurrection - if a model is resurrected, it MUST be placed within two inches of a model that has not resurrected that phase; if it can't the model counts as destroyed and is removed from play. This means that if a twelve-man squad takes eleven casualties, it'll be nigh impossible to return more than five of his guys, and if he does, they'll be clumped together very nicely for, say, a Razorwing missile barrage
I've yet to meet another Necron player who has read the rule closely enough to notice this, so this should make things a little easier.

That's something I hadn't noticed before and would probably have won me a game the other week if I'd known. I was playing with a SM army and had a Chapter Master on a bike who used his Orbital Bombardment to wipe out an entire unit of warriors that were bunched up on an objective. Only the Overlord survived but a lot of the warriors made their RP roll to come back. If they all had to be placed within 2" of the Overlord then at least some of them wouldn't have made it and the subsequent charge might have broken them.

Something to remember for next time!

For clarification purposes - I decided to throw Resurrection and Everliving rules here.  I have only met 1 Necron player who does this 100% by the book with counters instead of laying down guys. There's also some often missed details concerning RP and characters.

How Resurrection Protocol is supposed to work (paraphrasing the codex that I have in front of me)

A model with RP special rule dies, a maker or counter is to be placed by the unit indicating how many casualties were taken.  If the unit falls back, all Resurrection Protocol counters are removed.

At the end of each phase, after morale checks are made, the player rolls to see if any models resurrects.  On a 5+ (4+ with orb), the model is returned with a single wound and placed in coherency with another model in the unit that did not resurrect itself.  It must also be 1" away from any enemy models; however, if the unit is locked in combat, the model immediately piles in.  Any model that cannot be placed to meet these criteria for any reason does not return.

Units that are fully destroyed or reduced to just Characters (Lords, Crypteks, and ICs) has all of their resurrection counters removed.   Once all resurrection roll attempts have been done, the counters are removed as well. (That said, most agree that Lords and Crypteks remain as part of the unit since they are not ICs - thus are able to be scoring and trigger Ghost Arks' repair ability...this needs to be FAQed for clarification though).

How is this different than how most Necron players seem to play:

1. Laying down models can be used as counters but they do NOT have to return to that spot.  Many Necron players don't realize that you can gain 2" (for coherency) in your movement when models return.
   
   
2. A model does not just stand up and have to make coherency, they are automatically in coherency.  So if, somehow, the unit breaks coherency with where a model dies or is deployed in an elongated fashion and has the middle removed, the model is placed in coherency with the unit.  The model must become coherent again in the next movement phase.
   
   
3. A Lord, Cryptek, or joined IC is not enough to return the rest of the unit to life. So if the player has a lord with a resurrection orb in the unit and LOS shots to the point the unit is gone, the orb is rendered useless.
   

How is Everliving Different?
Everliving is a special Resurrection Protocol that characters have.  Lords, Crypteks, and ICs are the only models that have Everliving.  When an EL model dies, an ever living counter is placed and the roll is made at the end of phase just like RP.

The differences come from the fact that an EL token is not removed if the unit falls back or becomes completely wiped out.  In this circumstance, the RP counters are removed but not the EL.  The confusing part with this situation is that if a character is slain in combat prior to the unit being swept, it can come back.  If the character is alive when the unit is swept, it cannot.  Being ran off the board removes all counters however (per the FAQ....being swept needs to be FAQed as well to clarify).

EL models come back differently too.  It returns on a 5+ (4+ with orb) and must be 1" away from an enemy just like RP.  If the model was part of a unit, it rejoins the unit within coherency.  If it was on it's own, then it is placed 3" from the counter.  If the 3" put it within coherency of a unit that it can join it does so.  If the model was locked in combat, the combat is still ongoing and they pile in.  While not defined, most Necron players use this last bit to keep resurrected characters in challenges but this has not been 100% confirmed in an FAQ.


In terms of FAQs...

• The resurrection orb works even if the character has fallen (FAQ even cites that the orb holder's ever living roll should be done last to ensure the orb effect works for the rest of the unit)
  

• Running off the table removes all EL and RP tokens for the associated unit.  Sweeping a unit in CC has not been FAQ'ed yet.
  

I agree with adhemar. I have had great success with grotesques. Necron do not have a lot that can really deal with them. As far as the fliers are concerned. I usually plan on losing 3 of them a game. so the first turn or two is really vital. If you can take out 2 or 3 squads in a turn, i think youre doing pretty well. I just focus all of my shooting on the most threatening one first. I usually focus on the ones with the orbs first with EVERYTHING unit its gone. and i run the grots up the board into their barges as quick as possible for CC.

Ok can someone explain to me why grotesques are so good at taking out vehicles? (yes I am a noob). But with only S5 they need 6 to hit against AV 11 and cant hurt AV12+.
 
I can see that Razorflock can be effective but still need a 6 to get Rending.
I need to read up on assaulting vehicles again..
 
They last player I played against forgot to mention that his AV dropped from 13 to 11 after first glance / pen! Grr..

PS: What about Harlequins? Got Rending attacks as well, expensive sure...

goofydk wrote:

Ok can someone explain to me why grotesques are so good at taking out vehicles? (yes I am a noob). But with only S5 they need 6 to hit against AV 11 and cant hurt AV12+.

Because close combat attacks always hit rear armour, and most vehicles are AV10 on their rear armour.

At least annibarges are av11 from behind too.

Grots get furious charge after killing first noin vehicle unit when they get second pain token. S6 on charge helposti a lot. They can also start with haemy and have two pain tokens from the beginning.

Ahh cool thanks!

Still learning here..

Vasara wrote:

At least annibarges are av11 from behind too.

Grots get furious charge after killing first noin vehicle unit when they get second pain token. S6 on charge helposti a lot. They can also start with haemy and have two pain tokens from the beginning.

All Necron Vehicles in the codex except for flyers and the monolith are 11 in the rear regardless of what states their Quantum Shielding wargear is setup.

However, as a Necron player as well as DE, I don't fear DE charging my vehicles. While Grotesques do a great job and taking out my annihilation barges, they do not do well if I bring Ghost Arks since they are an open topped transport with rapid firing troops inside....and has 4 hull points instead of 3 like everything else. Likewise, the Triarch Stalker (walker) has Quantum Shielding as well so it'll be 13/13/11 until that first penetrating hit happens.

For me, my Necrons fear dark light weaponry since it reduces the effectiveness of Quantum Shielding and is AP2. After AP2 and Open-topped modifiers, that's a 2 to destroy a weapon (which is devastating to any Necron vehicle), 3 to immobalize it, and 4+ to blow it up. Factoring in a lance shot, that's 3+ to hit, 5+ to penetrate, and then 4+ to explode it. Even immobilizing Necron vehicles is a huge blow due to their primary 24" range.