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Note, my apologies for the brevity of this. Its crunch time at work, so I'm writing during a 15 minute, not a lunch break as I normally do.

I took my Necrons to the second round of 'Ardboyz, same as the first round. I improved the list slightly by adding Pariahs. Sounds silly, but if you play Necrons in 5th at 2500 you'll get what I mean.

Deceiver
10 warriors
10 warriors
Monolith
Monolith
Monolith
5 Destroyers
5 Destroyers
5 Destroyers
8 Immortals
4 Pariahs

Game #1: Vs. Horde Orks

Mad Doc Grotsnik
3 units of 30 slugga boys, one has 'ard armor
3 units of 30 shoota boys
15 Lootas
15 Lootas
15 Kommandos w/Snikrot
15 Stormboyz w/Zagstruck

Game:

He leaves the 2 reserve units in reserve, + one boy Mob because he can't get em stuffed into his DZ without becoming pie plate fodder.

He rushes me, I put liths in his way, get the Deceiver in the mix, kill Grotsnik w/Deceiver, inflict massive casualties (4 Troop choices in opening rounds).

Even though he chose to go first his reserves come in later, Snikrot gets a unit of warriors. The real damage comes from Zagstruck, who multicharges a pair of destroyers, and the lootas, who are firing at Destroyers all game.

Ultimately, we are basically tied in KP, but his last shot of the game gets my last destroyer unit, which forces phaseout.

Felt pretty bad about this game. I fell into the trap of feeling that I deserved to win, the game, the tourney, whatever. The fact of the matter is that it was a lot of fun to play that game, and you come to a tourney for fun games with strangers.

Game #2:

Dante
Corbulo
Land Raider w/GK terminators
2 jumping assault squads
3 rhino born squads
1 big vet squad
1 Death Company dread

The game:

An odd phenomenon, whenever I get knocked out of 'Ardboyz my dice turn my way hard. This game was tough for him from the start, as I've got a list advantage vs. assault lists that don't have Snikrot/Zagstruck, and even all his jetpacks rarely get him into combat, but other things were working against him this match. Dawn of War lets the Deceiver get a quick start, and the dice were in my favor. I massacred this foe.

Game #3:

Big Mek w/KFF
Warboss w/klaw
2 units of Nobs w/differing wargear, lotsa claws, cybork, in trukks.
2 units of trukk boys
2 units of footsloggers, 30 deep.
1 Battlewagon to carry around the Big Mek, it also had a big gun.
8 Lootas.

The dice gods continued to smile. I took revenge on the Orks in this match, which was an epic slaughter. If there's one thing Necrons can do its pop trukks with Destroyers, regardless of KFF protection, and then it was just a matter of lith pie plating + tankshocking and the Deceiver doing his thing. Ultimately he had his lootas left alive and naught else. I got another massacre.

Unsurprisingly, 2 massacres don't make up for a 0 in the first round, so I finished middle of the pack. More annoying is that the fellow who beat me in round 1 was basically a gift to the winner of the tourney, who crushed him with twin lash. I hate helping Player A out.

Sad to hear. The prospect of playing you, Player A, or other guys like you is one of the main draws for me going to Chicago.

Mannahnin wrote:Sad to hear. The prospect of playing you, Player A, or other guys like you is one of the main draws for me going to Chicago.

Bill Kim's going; go beat up on his Daemons.

Well, Player A won, so there's that.

You qualified, Ragnar?

B

Thanks for the report. I was half-sad that no one reignited the "You don't have enough Troops!" blather.

- Blackbone

Damn, phase out yet again snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. Thanks for your reports, they really changed the way I look at Necrons at a 'ard Boys level.

Centurian99 wrote:You qualified, Ragnar?

B

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/251871.page

I wasn't interested the first year, then missed the prelim last year because I was stuck buying a car for my wife. It's been fun so far this year.

So for those of us who don't play Necrons at 2500, what's the draw of the pariahs?

I was kind of surprised as well, but it turns out min Pariahs are better than a min sized unit of Immortals. This flies so far in the face of current thinking I didn't want to post about it, in fear of an endless series of arguments. Its like putting all your icons in the second wave in a Khornate Daemon list. It's obvious once you've played it a few times, but totally counterintuitive.

First off, a 2500 Necron list has some mandatories. Destroyers, Monoliths and Deceiver are the best points you can spend. So you buy those. Then you've got your scoring troops to hold down phaseout, so you buy those. Last, you've got points left over for Immortals.

Normally, I'd grab 2 units of Immortals, but experience has shown me that you want a unit of Pariahs, min sized. The best way to get it is to play the list a few times, but I'll try and point out the differences between 4th and 5th that make the Pariahs better.

#1: 24" no longer safe. Previously, the Immortals could simply walk backward and shoot, and thus avoid combat all game long. Now, between vehicles that don't pin you when they get krumped, lash, run, the need to get upfield for objectives and codex specific ways to get assaulters in close the Immortals/Pariahs are going to get stuck in combat more often, which means they are going to die. If they have to die you don't want them to be Necrons. (the Phase Out calculation, of course, is that the units that you expect to live you want to be Necrons, while those you intend to sacrifice you don't. Thus, Liths, Deceiver, Pariahs (who go forward) are not Necrons. Destroyers, warriors are. Its odd, but I wouldn't have phased in the first game if I'd had no Immortal unit and just a bigger Pariah one).

#2: Run strengthens Soulless. With Run, the enemy can't count on where the field will be, and that can be huge when combined with the Deceiver. You can run forward, bringing Berserkers/Assault Terminators/whatever into range after the Lith pops their transport, then Deceiver does his thing.

#3: Psykers in transports no longer immune to soulless. Once again, a big deal. If your Pariahs happen to be in 12" of the enemy's transports they will be taking psyker tests at 7 when they lash/doom/whatever out of the vehicle. If they want to move to get their stuff to work the vehicles firing is affected.

#4: Fearless better for combat res. Or rather, nonfearless worse. Previously the Immortals could hold combat, get lithed out and blast the enemy. Nowadays they just get sweeping advanced.

#5: Monoliths block LOS. Previously you could shoot under them. Now they are true LOS, and Pariahs can move around amung them and attempt to survive long enough to get their aura into range.

#6: Warscythes opening vehicles more probable now. It isn't so much that they hit rear armor, almost nothing they charge will see a dif between rear armor and front armor, its that there are more transports, so more vehicles closing on you. Opening battlewagons, ironclad dreads, etc, with warscythes is a much bigger prospect than it was back in the day.

Interesting to see the tactics that open up at 2500 points.

40kenthusiast wrote:Mad Doc Grotsnik
... w/Snikrot
... w/Zagstruck

...

Dante
Corbulo

Christ I hate 40K at the moment. Jervis' hardon for Special Characters is hurting the game...

Congrats on the win though 40kenthusiast - nice to see Necrons doing well in this climate despite their drawbacks.

I didn't actually win...but thanks for the congratulations anyway. I can't wait for a new Necron codex, but in the meantime I'll use what I've got.

Well you did pretty well for Necrons in 5th, and that's what matters.

40Kenthusiast, more intelligent arguments like that, and you may get me to change my mind about Pariahs and not utterly despise the fact that I ended up with 4 Pariahs when I suddenly came into a Necron army(finally making it so that I own every single army in the game).

When you want to play an army in a major tournament that most players find underpowered, you have to use out-of-the-box thinking. The first impression of the list is that its vulnerable in a 5th edition setting due to lack of troops and necron models, but in a way that will actually help the list out. People will be too worried trying to exploit that vulnerability that they will allows themselves to get hammered by everything else in the army.