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First of all, this is not meant to be a rant. I played a game last weekend against a buddy of mine, who is using the new Necron codex. I took him on with my Tyranids in an 1850 point battle, and in that game his Mindshackle Scarabs accounted for a Mawlock, two (wounded) Carnifexes, and a Broodlord. For some reason I just couldn't make a leadership check, but I had no problem wounding myself.

So, misery loves company, and a problem shared is a problem halved. For those of you who have taken on the Mindshackle Scarabs, what (if anything) have you lost to them? I've watched Reecius' battle in which Mephiston kills himself. Any other anecdotes out there?

Zarry

Just wanted to do a quick update here. In every game I've played against my Necron opponent recently, the Mindshackle Scarabs have accounted for almost every one of my monstrous creatures. Even on a 10 leadership, I always manage to blow the roll and kill myself off. It's so effective, my opponent is going out of his way to field the things, taking as many characters as he can with them so I'm fighting two of them in each large unit.

I'm getting so frustrated with these things I'm almost at the point where I'm going to stop fielding monstrous creatures altogether. I'd really hate to think what other armies with lower leaderships are going through right now. Is ANYONE else having trouble with this item? Misery loves company, and I'd love to hear what you guys are going through.

Zarry

F**kers killed Sliscus one time

Please don't just post quotes consisting of images or videos. -Mannahnin

You could...well, not assault the units with mindshackles with anything big. That tends to reduce their effectiveness (and they only have a 12" threat range so it's not much). Tyranids DO still have some pretty decent shooting (tyrant with dual twin linked devourers) in places, so you can focus on them that way.

Of course if they're spread among units of warriors and such it gets harder. Advice there is be clever with your positioning. Mindshackles ONLY work on a random model in base contact, so get some tyrant guard or make sure the model in base with the lord isn't very significant (again, tyrant guard, regular stealer, hormagaunt). If it's all in one group, ignore it as best you can or shoot it to pieces first.

However, I've seen a tyrant punch itself to death, and had a harlequin turn on its own squad (resulting in NO casualties thanks to spectacular saves), but that's it. Of course, I haven't faced them at all other than the one Eldar game (the tyrant was a friend).

I'd like to point out that before this codex Necrons were so outdated it was incredibly difficult to field a decent army save for 2 lists which needed fairly good tactics to win with.
This is an easy price to pay in order to have another army to play against and with.

Here's what you do to counter the shackles: position normal infantry into base contact with the Lord holding them. He can only use them on random models in base contact with him so thus you lose, what, a dude with 2 attacks at best?

Or an even better prospect, multi charge a MC and little griblies so the little guys soak up the scarabs while the MC goes to town on the Lord's unit.

I'd like to remind all Monstrous Creature-heavy players (including myself) that the new necrons are actually quite bad at killing MCs. Their options really consist of;
-Eldritch Lances (good, but 35pts a pop)
-Hordes of Tesla shooting (doesn't ignore armour / fnp)
-Hordes of Gauss shooting (inneffective)
-Deathmarks (no-one takes, because they're useless against everything else/don't ignore 2+ saves)
-Mindshackle scarabs.

I'd also like to point out that if they don't kill them, Monstrous creatures will literally walk through the Necron army. In a recent game in the hobby store, I saw a run-of-the-mill Grey Knight army simply dominate a scarab spam, because the necron player simply had no counter to his pair of dreadknights other than three Crypteks with Eldritch Lances, that were dealt with in short order.

To this end; mindshackle scarabs. They're one of the tools crons use to counter MCs. Solution; assault in with multiple squads at a time, and tag the lord/overlord with something expendible, whlst hitting the rest of the squad with the big beastie. You win combat by a large margin, they fail leadership, they get swept, 300pts down the drain, simple.

As for personal stories; I once saw Lysander beat himself to death after consecutive fails. Pretty funny

Warboss Gutrip wrote:I'd like to remind all Monstrous Creature-heavy players (including myself) that the new necrons are actually quite bad at killing MCs. Their options really consist of;
-Eldritch Lances (good, but 35pts a pop)
-Hordes of Tesla shooting (doesn't ignore armour / fnp)
-Hordes of Gauss shooting (inneffective)
-Deathmarks (no-one takes, because they're useless against everything else/don't ignore 2+ saves)
-Mindshackle scarabs.

I'd also like to point out that if they don't kill them, Monstrous creatures will literally walk through the Necron army. In a recent game in the hobby store, I saw a run-of-the-mill Grey Knight army simply dominate a scarab spam, because the necron player simply had no counter to his pair of dreadknights other than three Crypteks with Eldritch Lances, that were dealt with in short order.

To this end; mindshackle scarabs. They're one of the tools crons use to counter MCs. Solution; assault in with multiple squads at a time, and tag the lord/overlord with something expendible, whlst hitting the rest of the squad with the big beastie. You win combat by a large margin, they fail leadership, they get swept, 300pts down the drain, simple.

As for personal stories; I once saw Lysander beat himself to death after consecutive fails. Pretty funny

I'll raise you a single squad of lychguard, a CCB, or any or our particle weapons. Seriously, Necrons can effectively take out MCs if need be.

Sunoccard wrote:

Warboss Gutrip wrote:I'd like to remind all Monstrous Creature-heavy players (including myself) that the new necrons are actually quite bad at killing MCs. Their options really consist of;
-Eldritch Lances (good, but 35pts a pop)
-Hordes of Tesla shooting (doesn't ignore armour / fnp)
-Hordes of Gauss shooting (inneffective)
-Deathmarks (no-one takes, because they're useless against everything else/don't ignore 2+ saves)
-Mindshackle scarabs.

I'd also like to point out that if they don't kill them, Monstrous creatures will literally walk through the Necron army. In a recent game in the hobby store, I saw a run-of-the-mill Grey Knight army simply dominate a scarab spam, because the necron player simply had no counter to his pair of dreadknights other than three Crypteks with Eldritch Lances, that were dealt with in short order.

To this end; mindshackle scarabs. They're one of the tools crons use to counter MCs. Solution; assault in with multiple squads at a time, and tag the lord/overlord with something expendible, whlst hitting the rest of the squad with the big beastie. You win combat by a large margin, they fail leadership, they get swept, 300pts down the drain, simple.

As for personal stories; I once saw Lysander beat himself to death after consecutive fails. Pretty funny

I'll raise you a single squad of lychguard, a CCB, or any or our particle weapons. Seriously, Necrons can effectively take out MCs if need be.

Lychguard? Seriously? The assault troops with no transport option other than a close-topped Night Scythe? They also only have 2 S5 attacks; a charging Trygon will kill about three before they strike, then you *might* do a single wound back. If you take warscythes, they all die before they strike. Not to mention just how tailory this is; a unit of Lychguard would be utterly useless against IG, for example.

Command barge... I facepalmed. Again, with three shots hitting on a 4+, *maybe* you'll do a wound or two. Then it moves, fleets, charges, and rips the barge in half, or better yet, goes and eats a whole unit of warriors. Seriously, this is not a reliable way to down MC's.

Remind me, what precisely can you take particle weapons on? Yeah, the only one that scares me is the Particle whip, and that is exclusive to monoliths. So again, you'll *maybe* do one wound a turn, then get eaten. The other ones simply can't be taken in the volume necessary to hurt MC's.

Make no mistake; I think Necrons are a really competitive codex. I think they own Razorspam and Mech IG parking lots so hard, it's not even funny. But seriously, their inability to reliably deal with even one Trygon (outside of 10x Crypteks with Eldritch lance) is a serious hurdle for them as a codex. And mindshackle scarabs, whilst cute, are easily mitigated and if you pass the leadership test, the overlord will likely die.

Couple in the fact a full squad of Destroyers with 3 Heavy gauss cannons should be able to destroy a big beast or at least leave it where small arms fire will finish the job every turn. Also expendable scarab swarms. All they have to do is 1 wound and suddenly that 2+ save tyrant is looking for a wooden barrel to cover his naked form. Yes not the most clever use but since has throwing scarabs at a problem ever been? Hell, if I could I'd go "Epic Scarab time" with list building.

Kurgash wrote:Couple in the fact a full squad of Destroyers with 3 Heavy gauss cannons should be able to destroy a big beast or at least leave it where small arms fire will finish the job every turn. Also expendable scarab swarms. All they have to do is 1 wound and suddenly that 2+ save tyrant is looking for a wooden barrel to cover his naked form. Yes not the most clever use but since has throwing scarabs at a problem ever been? Hell, if I could I'd go "Epic Scarab time" with list building.

Here's the list of problems with that strategy.

1. 180pts for a 3-model squad of 1W T5 3+ saves is not good, it is awful. When a Dark Eldar Venom spam kills 540pts of models first turn, you will cry.
2. They compete with Scarabs, Tomb Blades, and Wraiths, all of which are better.
3. If you're using Imhotek's Night Fighting to protect them, you are reducing their effective range, potentially to the point where they have to move into assault range to fire. Not good.
4. It is exceptionally tailor-y to bring Heavy Destroyers, as you will want scarabs more against every other army, and they are incredibly easy to kill.

On the Scarabs killing MC's note..

Mathematically, you need about 20 surviving scarabs in order to strip a trygon of its armour save. This means, to effectively kill one trygon, you will need to charge it with upwards of 25 scarabs. As the armour save is stripped after an unsaved wound, and all the scarabs are the same initiative, and the trygon has instant-killed about 5 bases, you can expect to lose combat by a margin of about 12.

So you sacrifice ~375pts of Scarabs to do two wounds and strip the armour save off a Trygon? No, that's not good value... Not to mention, that uses up all of your Fast Attack slots. No, that is not good...

Well you never mentioned anything about dark eldar, venom spam and such. You wanted a listing of what can kill MC's and I gave you one option.

Trygons are a powerful enemy, and should rightfully be feared, however, that's not to say that we don't have the tools to deal with them. Some aren't as effective as others, but we still have them.

The thing to keep in mind about a Trygon is that it has a possible assault range of 18', however with most of our weapons having a 24' range, You should be O.K. if you can judge distances well.

For starters, usually the best thing to do is drown in in volume of fire. A lot of the comparisons here, are a single unit firing on a Trygon, which you would never do. Several units firing at it, however can do it in fairly easy. I know I take Gauss cannons on the CCB and Annihilation barges. While it only wounds on a 5+, it still punches through. In addition to volleys from a few Tesla Destructors, it's going to start failing saves.

Sending Scarabs against it is a horrible idea. Your scarabs are much better off chewing through the smaller bugs, which they can do with ease.

Wraiths may take some time in dealing with the Trygon, but if they get the Charge, they may kill it out right. They hit on 4's and wound on 4's and with 3 (4 on the charge) Attacks each (and Whip coils giving them first go) Depending on your squad size, you may just outright kill it. The 2W 3++ and rending is really put to good use here.

A C'tan will also eventually kill a Trygon. The fact that a Trygon only wounds 5's here, while the C'tan wounds on 3's helps balance out the superior number of attacks and rerolls the Trygon gets because of it's dual Scytals.

A Group of 3 Spyders with wound allocation will eventually come out on top of a Trygon, since it would take 7 wounds before the first Spyder is killed. but this generally a poor use of them. The option is there though.

In a lot of TAC lists you usually see at least 2 Lances in them, usually more. With no Tanks to fire at, a Trygon is an excellent target for these. At 36', and the fact that these are distributed all over the army, means that depending on the amount fielded a Trygon will generally get killed in a turn or two.

MSS as pointed out, is quite phenomenal on a Trygon. a Regular Trygon is only LD 8, so the likelihood of him failing the test extremely high. Couple this with the single Warscythe wound that is likely to go through, The Trygon will likely be dead in two rounds. a Trygon Prime is LD 10, but it is also still likely to fail the test on average as well. Generally you want to try to avoid a Trygon getting into this stage if possible, because if MSS doesn't go off, prepare to be swept.

Overall, we have a bit of trouble dealing with TMC, which is how it should be for every codex anyway. It's certainly not impossible by any stretch of the imagination.

Zarryiosiad wrote:Just wanted to do a quick update here. In every game I've played against my Necron opponent recently, the Mindshackle Scarabs have accounted for almost every one of my monstrous creatures. Even on a 10 leadership, I always manage to blow the roll and kill myself off. It's so effective, my opponent is going out of his way to field the things, taking as many characters as he can with them so I'm fighting two of them in each large unit.

I'm getting so frustrated with these things I'm almost at the point where I'm going to stop fielding monstrous creatures altogether. I'd really hate to think what other armies with lower leaderships are going through right now. Is ANYONE else having trouble with this item? Misery loves company, and I'd love to hear what you guys are going through.

When I think of Nids and a problem they have that seems hard to tackle, I have to ask my tried and timeless question: Have you tried genestealers yet? If yes, then are you trying enough of them?

Considering if you are the one assaulting, you just need to make sure that you always put something in base contact with the lord so he cannot make his defenders react move into any of your special models. Also warscythes mess MC up very easily, also so do necron destroyers and heavy destroyers.

Add Spiders, Wraiths, Lich Guard, and Tesseract Traps to the list of ways Necrons can bone Nid MCs. News flash: Nids are bad and in other breaking news Vader is Lukes father. Mind Shackle scarabs are great, to be sure, but if you get screwed by them its largely your own fault for positioning things poorly.

So far my best Mind Scarab result was having Mephiston Sepuku himself, but thats long odds. Usually, its all about turning their fist into your fist in prolonged fights.

Phazael wrote:Add Spiders, Wraiths, Lich Guard, and Tesseract Traps to the list of ways Necrons can bone Nid MCs. News flash: Nids are bad and in other breaking news Vader is Lukes father. Mind Shackle scarabs are great, to be sure, but if you get screwed by them its largely your own fault for positioning things poorly.

So far my best Mind Scarab result was having Mephiston Sepuku himself, but thats long odds. Usually, its all about turning their fist into your fist in prolonged fights.

Lychguard and Tessrect labyrinths are really not that effective.

A Lychguard unit of 5 with shields, vs a Trygon.

The Trygon goes first, 5-6 attacks hit, since it is hitting on 3's and rerolling all misses. It's likely getting all Six of his attacks in. 4 of those will wound, and your down 2 Lychguard before you get to strike. 6 Attacks go, Half of them miss, 1/3 wound. You then hope you pass your LD 9 test or get swept. None stand back up. The Trygon likely sweeps you after killing two more Lychguard in the next combat round.

Not really all that surprising, since Lychguard really aren't designed to kill TMCs.

Tessrects also rely on you doing several wounds early on to the TMC in question. Most start 6W, so the Tessrect is useless until you can whittle it down quite a bit. You also sacrifice your attacks to use it. Personally, I'd never take one when I can just have MSS, for cheaper.

Warboss Gutrip wrote:I'd like to remind all Monstrous Creature-heavy players (including myself) that the new necrons are actually quite bad at killing MCs. Their options really consist of;
-Eldritch Lances (good, but 35pts a pop)
-Hordes of Tesla shooting (doesn't ignore armour / fnp)
-Hordes of Gauss shooting (inneffective)
-Deathmarks (no-one takes, because they're useless against everything else/don't ignore 2+ saves)
-Mindshackle scarabs.

I'd also like to point out that if they don't kill them, Monstrous creatures will literally walk through the Necron army. In a recent game in the hobby store, I saw a run-of-the-mill Grey Knight army simply dominate a scarab spam, because the necron player simply had no counter to his pair of dreadknights other than three Crypteks with Eldritch Lances, that were dealt with in short order.

To this end; mindshackle scarabs. They're one of the tools crons use to counter MCs. Solution; assault in with multiple squads at a time, and tag the lord/overlord with something expendible, whlst hitting the rest of the squad with the big beastie. You win combat by a large margin, they fail leadership, they get swept, 300pts down the drain, simple.

As for personal stories; I once saw Lysander beat himself to death after consecutive fails. Pretty funny

Destroyers & Heavy Destroyers put down MCs like old farm dogs. Everyone seems to have left these wonderful units at home in favour of the shiny new Scarabs, but I assure you, two squads of these guys can deliver a horrific level of damage to a Nidzilla list.

And as for the MSS, I got Mephiston to ID himself. Because you totally can do that. It wasn't even in question.

Destroyers really aren't that effective at killing TMC.

Say you have a squad of 5 vs a Trygon.

10 shots, 6.6 hit. 2.2 wound. A Trygon has six wounds

If you replace 3 of the Destroyers with Heavy Destroyers it adds up to about the same.

We have much better options in our codex.

In the game I ranted about in the second post, the Trygon Prime was never supposed to get into contact with the Necron unit containing the Mindshackle Scarabs. He had the Phaeron in a unit of Immortals guarding his Doomsday ark. I used Deep Strike with both the Trygon and a 20-strong unit of Termagants armed with Devourers in a Mycetic Spore Pod. The Trygon had a horrible scatter roll, moving him far away from the Doomsday Ark, while the Termagants landed straight on target. I shot the living hell out of his Immortal unit, and managed to kill every member of the unit except the damn Phaeron. Unfortunately for me, he managed to roll well enough to RP the entire unit, and in his turn he blew away the termagants with the Doomsday Ark (killed 14 out of 20) and cleared a path to the Trygon.

In the assault phase, I failed my roll and wounded myself twice, while the Lord did another wound. I lost combat by three because I couldn't attack, but passed all of my armor saves for Fearless. In my turn I sent in the surviving termagant to try to give the Phaeron more targets for the Mindshackle scarabs, but because all of the shooting damage I'd done to his unit had caused zero casualties, he was able to position his Phaeron to where it only touched my trygon. In the next assault phase, I did nothing whatsoever with the termagants, blew my roll with the Trygon AGAIN, and promptly killed myself. Right after that, I charged that unit with a unit of Shrikes armed with dual boneswords, and managed to kill three of my own shrikes because of the Mindshackle scarabs forcing me to bonesword myself to death, losing me the unit. Finally, a second unit of immortals with another set of Mindshackle scarabs forced a Tervigon to kill itself.

All in all, it was not a good night for the Tyranids. The vast majority of both kill points and ACTUAL points were caused not by the army itself, but by two sets of Mindshackle scarabs. If I'd been able to make a single leadership roll for any of the creatures it might have been a different story. Alas, it was not to be. I do use Genestealers, usually two squads of 15 with Toxin sacs, and they always do really well. But they were out of position in this game, thanks to my opponent's use of the Veil of Darkness.

This is the third game I've run into the MS wall, and it's cost me my Trygon and more each time. I stopped carrying boneswords with my Hive Tyrant just because I don't want him to insta-gib himself when I inevitably fail that frelling 3d6 leadership test.

Zarry

Addressing the Original Post:

Just one obliterator died to his own fist.

My Khorne Bs, another oblit, and some PMs all managed the leadership checks. Still lost though.

Azazel - so you cheated then? Good to know.

You cannot use MSS to force the player to use a psychic power (FW) , as you know from the YMDC thread where your argument was comprehensively blown apart