The horror that is the Necron Tomb Stalker

Not sure if the rules for this are widely known, but it ignores poisoned weapons!

Had to play against one last night and it pulped a wych squad in CC! The wyches were busy assaulting some Scarabs and it snuck up on them and then took their lunch money with 6A (4+2 on the charge) and T7. Only the Agoniser of the Hekatrix could hurt it on a roll of a 6..no good.

Word to the wise is that you have to lance it to death, but it has 5 wounds!


http://www.forgeworld.co.uk/Downloads/Product/PDF/t/tstalker.pdf

Though I will note - wounding on a 6+ still leaves it very open to death via splinter weapons, not to mention it's functionally a Talos, and for less points most Talos would easily slap that sucker around since they're stronger and have more attacks. Venoms or other poisoned shooting could still work; statistically each Venom fired at it will put a wound on it.

Also, let's be frank, it's not like your dark lances have anything better to shoot at with the Necrons on the board. Venoms and other poison shooting should be shooting Warriors, Wraiths, and Destroyers. The lances should have all the time in the world, 3 Trueblaster squads would almost kill it in one round shooting with even average rolls.

Avoid assault with Wyches - seek Assault with Talos, and fire your lances at it and splinter weaponry if you have to.

Except that you need about 50 Splinter shots to kill it, which unless you have a lot of cannons you are doing at 12". This means you need to do it in one turn else it's charging you and killing you.

I don't usually run a Talos, do you take them outside of a WWP list? If so I'd like to hear how they perform?

Not sure I agree that Dark Lances have nothing else to shoot at, Destroyers have a 3+ save so that AP2 comes in useful on them, plus if they shoot back they can mess up Dark Eldar flyers - to which my dead Blasterborn will attest.

I'll counter that I feel you're overstating the Necron threat. I will admit my math forgot his armor save though.

vs. Tomb Stalker - 3 Venoms - 36 shots - 24 hits - 4 wounds - 1.3 get through. Not optimal, but still doable depending on your Venom count.

But though I'll admit I whiffed it versus the Stalker (my excuse will be IA unit) You're selling yourself short vs. Destroyers;

vs. Destroyers - 3 Venoms - 36 shots - 24 hits - 12 wounds - 4 get through. Very functional for cutting down Destroyer squads.

3 Ravagers vs. Tomb Stalker - 9 shots - 6 hits - 4 wounds. So one concentrated round of firing from your Ravagers will functionally kill the thing. Math tells us you would want to get 7-8 hits to kill it, so 12 dark lance shots should kill the thing more than half the time. 24 if it's in cover. A DE list ought to be able to afford 12 lance shots on Turn 2-3 to kill the sucker before it becomes a big threat to their ships.

Also, you only let it assault vehicles that have moved 6+ inches so it needs 6 to hit and will statistically not do to much to the vehicle in question.

Your poison can go to good use versus his Destroyers, C'Tan, and whatnot.

Oh, and I only run Talos in Apocalypse or WWP.

I would agonizer him to death, wych squad with succubus more relible than shooting imo and he dont get cover. With shardnets(bloodbrides-3) he has 1A and with normal wych with only 1 shardnet those 3A wont do much.

Quote :

A DE list ought to be able to afford 12 lance shots on Turn 2-3 to kill the sucker

I dont have this comfort to spend 12 lances on that thing when destroyers are shooting down my boats.

You probably need to bring more lances then

Using Wyches isn't a bad idea - you just have to be cautious of the leadership tests from losing combat.

Perhaps I am overstating, but I always get whupped by them.

Venom count is 3, but in that game they we hunting bigger fish (the C'Tan) which they killed on the first turn using only 2, on the first shot!

The thing is with destroyers, as with all necron units is that if you can wiped the whole squad off the face of the planet, then they don't WBB, which is nice! Of course DL will do this to warriors with instant death too! Always have factor in WBB when Mathhammering Necrons.

Around here there's a kind of comp in use, which says that you can only have 2 units the same outside of troops choices, so I can only ever field 2 Ravagers, and hence why I only have two. 3 would be great but I'd not get to use one of them of regualr clubs nights and at least 2 tournaments this year would have banned #3.

@GrenAcid, Not sure this tactic is really going to work, as that's what I had and I died in droves. Even assuming Bloodbrides, you are still only likely to tarpit him provided your morale holds. In the first turn he has a 50% chance of hitting you, and then 83% chance of wounding - if he does this it's instant death for one wych, and then you lose combat as your chance of hitting back is the same but your chance of wounding is only 17%. Given the Agoniser might do one wound a turn with better than average dice, then you are fighting the whole game and not winning.

It's not instant death - Wyches have a 4+ invulnerable.

Do you run no Raiders, Trueborn, Blaster Warriors, or Dark Lance infantry? Even under the odd restrictions of your club there's lots of ways to get lances on the field.

Thor665 wrote:

It's not instant death - Wyches have a 4+ invulnerable.

Do you run no Raiders, Trueborn, Blaster Warriors, or Dark Lance infantry? Even under the odd restrictions of your club there's lots of ways to get lances on the field.

I knew the about 4+, but seems we've been playing ID wrongly then. Need to go and reread my rule book.

Yes I have Raiders and blaster warriors but no lance inf at the moment, it's more of an issue of getting them all in the the same place to kill things like the TS, as I was trying unsuccessfully to dodge the Monolith in the centre of the board.

SirTainly wrote:

Yes I have Raiders and blaster warriors but no lance inf at the moment, it's more of an issue of getting them all in the the same place to kill things like the TS, as I was trying unsuccessfully to dodge the Monolith in the centre of the board.

Does Haywire work on Monoliths?

J Mc wrote:

SirTainly wrote:

Yes I have Raiders and blaster warriors but no lance inf at the moment, it's more of an issue of getting them all in the the same place to kill things like the TS, as I was trying unsuccessfully to dodge the Monolith in the centre of the board.

Does Haywire work on Monoliths?

Yes.

Well, if you are playing against the IA stuff, I'd suggest coming prepared. This is one of the few times I'd suggest something like a huskblade, fleshgauntlet, hexrifle, or shattershard

The hexrifle and shattershard give you the safety of range, but both are going to require a test that will only fail on a 6.

Huskblade and fleshgauntlet are the best bet, but the huskblade you'll need to either hit another IC/MC with a trap first, or have furious charge.

A really out there idea to deal with it, Urien, with buffed Grots, Aberration with flesh guantlet. Together they'll have furious charge, making the Aberration S7 on the charge. Even though you only wound on a 6, the flesh gauntlet is still a poisoned weapon, your Str and it's T are equal, so you re-roll to wound. So basically 6 attacks on the charge, rerolling to wound causing instant death if it makes it through. All the other attacks are wounding on 4s on the first round, and 5s on subsequent rounds. Uriens clone field and healing should allow him to take some hits from it.

Interesting ideas there, like the one with the Grotesques - very situational but could work.

Alas I didn't know before hand I was playing IA stuff, I just took the list I'm currently testing against all comers, I don't really tailor it for specific games as I feel that's very cheesy and useless as tournament practice.

For tournament practice you'll never face a Tomb Stalker unless the tourney allows IA and I've never seen that.

Astro allows IA, our club one does too so it's not impossible at all, in fact at our club one I faced Eldar Hornets from IA.

Certainly not at GTs or Ard Boyz though. Just in 'in shop' tournaments, yes? I could see it for league play, it's kind of odd for in shop tourney, I would be honestly freaked out if they allowed it for anything beyond.

No, not those but Astronomi-con is a quite a bit bigger than a shop tournament though.

http://www.astronomi-con.com/

Looks fun, definitely a bit odd.
Officially by their rules the Tomb Stalker still wouldn't be allowed as it isn't a vehicle - but I suspect that's just the rules lawyer in me.

Their composition rules are really weird and punish armies with affordable Troop selections though and reward Space Marines who are able to combat squad - par for the course I'm afraid. I can't get over how the rules punish someone for taking 1 Ravager, 1 Talos, and 1 Voidraven the exact same it punishes someone for 3x Ravager - they don't understand what they're trying to limit with those rules unless their goal is to make people take max units for quicker games.

If you're going and fear facing the Tomb Spider I still advocate bringing lots of lance weaponry as the solution - with IA vehicles allowed you're going to want a lot of lances anyway, some of those things are pretty nasty.

I suspect that the page was written before IA had monstrous creatures, and that it'd be allowed in if you emailed them and checked.

The comp rules have gone this year thankfully. You're right some armies get overly punished if all their AT or AI lives in one section other than troops, or have say a fast attack section that is useless (C:CSM) and would prefer to take an extra elite or heavy and no FA.