Pages 1-8 of this thread are from the Index era. Page 9 onwards for Codex discussion.
Once the Codex is in players hands, points updated etc I will start updating this post with relevant info.
For now though..
The Lychguard is dead, long live the Wraith!
Legacy Index stuff:
Spoiler:
15/08/23 Edit:
Latest WHC Metawatch article:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/08/10/warhammer-40000-metawatch-the-first-win-rates-from-the-new-edition/ Sitting at an almost perfectly balanced 49% win rate could be a double edged sword. Necrons may well avoid any nerfs in upcoming balance changes (which could end up elevating the factions performance as the top armies get toned down), but also we'll probably avoid any buffs being handed out, especially for some of the less played units that are potentially overcosted.
Auspex Tactics Necron tier list breakdown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fkpDCVXdVE8 Hard to disagree with anything in this vid so is a good starting point for new players. The only additional input I have on top of this is we have a very small grouping of units that are objectively trash, with the rest of the index being split into great/good/overcosted. The garbage tier units to currently avoid:
1. Psychomancer - easily the worst character in an army that focuses on character synergy. RAW the leadership debuff actually enhances enemy units.
2. Night Scythe - transport flyers without the hover ability and/or serious guns are currently worthless.
3. Convergence of Dominion - it costs as much as Nightbringer and does nothing of value. If you have this set it is better used as terrain or the galaxy's greatest tactical rock.
Necron GT topping list:
https://www.goonhammer.com/competitive-innovations-in-10th-no-more-elves-pt-1/ Featuring a double Lycheguard brick, Transcendent C'Tan with sempiternal weave, and Hexmark with sovereign coronal surrounded by guns. A really good representation of the current tournament lists that are having success using unkillable Lycheguard supported by the most efficient killing units. A lot of the other tournament lists you'll see when checking out places like Goonhammer are very much in a similar style to this, although sometimes a reasonably well placed list featuring Monoliths will pop up (often a derivative of double Lycheguard plus double Monolith with supporting Hexmark).
Current meta unit choices:
The Lycheguard brick
*10 sword and board Lycheguard
*2 Cryptothralls
*Technomancer (preferably the cloak version)
*Lord or overlord with orb (overlord on your 1st unit, maybe a budget lord on 2nd unit)
One of the most durable anythings in the game right now. Tank high AP shots on the shields (T5, -1 to wound, 3+/4++/5+++). Tank low AP shots on the Crypto's (T5, -1 to wound, 3+/4+++). Great reanimations from the orb, potential free use of protocol of the undying legions, and is a fantastic way to mess with enemy target prioritisation (as they likely will not succeed in destroying you). Don't forget that Crypto's become part of the bodyguard unit, so benefit from higher toughness, -1 to wound, and can be resurrected continuously while the unit lives. The faster cloak-mancer can move around the unit to heal other things without slowing the unit down, and has a massive base which can help with placing reanimated models in helpful places (up front for closing down charge ranges).
Hexmark with sovereign coronal + gun line.
Low cost character with lone operative, enhanced overwatch, and a nifty aura ability (reactive shooting). Can combine with the excellent enhancement the sovereign coronal to layer up another aura to give all units in range the detachment leader buff. This combines amazingly well with some of the efficient gun platforms in the index, particularly vehicles that cannot be led any over way. Common units to sit in the aura:
*Lokhust Heavy Destroyers with gauss destructors
*Doomsday Arks
Transcendent C'Tan with sempiternal weave.
Big monster with a 4+++, and can teleport around the board when it advances (and remember, repositioned units from teleport abilities count as having made a normal move, so shooting and charging are allowed). Recently buffed further by having reanimation protocols retrospectively added to the datasheet - this model can now regen up to 3D3 wounds per turn on top of it's in built durability (D3 reanimation, another D3 reanimation if you stand near a Reanimator, another D3 repaired if you stand near a Technomancer). Not an epic hero like the other shards, but a harder model to get your hands on. The Void Dragon is probably the 2nd choice C'Tan shard.
Canoptek Reanimator.
Cheap enough that if it dies, it has still served it's purpose by directing fire away from other things. If you can hide it from enemy fire, any of your units not completely killed are liable to just get back up. Special mention to trying to keep these in range of Technomancers (can repair an additional D3 wounds on top of the 2D3 it would reanimate) and/or Spyders (to get a 6+++).
I missed that about the Hexmark. It was one of my recent purchases. Hooray!
And yeah, literally every Necron strat gets boosted if the unit has a character leading it. Suddenly glad I have 4 Overlords from various combo boxes!
I already liked the Reanimator in 9th. It's better in 10th.
On the whole, far more enthused about Necrons than my other army, Slaanesh. My first game of 10th will be Necrons for sure. Already put together a 1000 points list. (My group will play some 1k games first to familiarise ourselves with 10th. After that, probably 1500 most of the time.)
I'm gonna try running a Royal Warden with some Immortals. Gives them Assault AND Heavy. So if there's a choice target, Heavy lets me hit on 2+. If I need to move, Assault will let me advance if needed and still shoot.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Reanimator has 2 Atomiser Beams, but the part I like most is that every unit within 12" gets +1d3 wounds in reanimation. In 9th, it was 1 unit per turn.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Plan is to chuck a single Reanimator behind 2 squads of Warriors. Shoiuld be cost effective.
Hecate wrote:*snip* I'm gonna try running a Royal Warden with some Immortals. Gives them Assault AND Heavy. So if there's a choice target, Heavy lets me hit on 2+. If I need to move, Assault will let me advance if needed and still shoot.
*snip*
Hit roll modifiers are still capped at +/-1 maximum, so our detachment rule provides that innately. Assault is very useful though. When new detachments start coming out I think the Warden will go up in value quite a bit.
usernamesareannoying wrote:What is tank shock?
*snip*
A new core rulebook stratagem. 1 Vehicle can roll to cause MW when it charges, rolling a number of dice based on it's melee strength characteristic.
Well, the Immortals will need a leader to get the detachment +1 to hit, and the Royal Warden is cheap. So it still might be a good match, especially with Assault.
- Warriors are completely pointless. No way is their statline worth 12pts. Especially when, for just 2pts more, we can get Immortals who have better T, Svs, WS, BS, and twice the range on their guns.
- It is me or is The Sovereign Coronal enhancement completely insane? It says that every Necron unit within 6" counts as being led by a Necron Character. Okay. However, there is no requirement whatsoever that the unit be one that is normally eligible for such. Wraiths? Led by a Necron character. Triarch Preatorians? Led by a Necron character. Doomsday Arks? Led by a Necron character. Doomscythes? Led by a Necron character.
It seems all we need to do is give it to a Hexmark or Technomancer with Lone Operative, put it in the centre of our army, and we can basically recreate 8th edition Space Marines.
- I'm really excited to try out the various generic HQs. My first instinct is just have a lot of Immortals, each led by an Overlord, Lord or Cryptek.
- Speaking of which, our Crypteks all seem pretty good . . . with the exception of the Psychotherapist. Even if his aura didn't make enemies less fearful, he just doesn't seem to add anything. I think he needs to be able to apply a much more substantial debuff to be a viable choice.
Hecate wrote: Well, the Immortals will need a leader to get the detachment +1 to hit, and the Royal Warden is cheap. So it still might be a good match, especially with Assault.
True. Warden might counter the -1, then swing it to +1 with Heavy.
And yeah, Warriors seem not as good a choice as Immortals. Unfortunately for me, I have 40 Warriors and only 5 Immortals. Ack! Probably getting at least 10 more.
My first game will have 2x 10 Warriors, 1 squad per weapon option (even though I suspect the longer-ranged one will be kind of crap), plus 1x 5 Immortals with gauss. Give them all a chance before deciding what I wanna do going forward.
Hecate wrote:*snip* I'm gonna try running a Royal Warden with some Immortals. Gives them Assault AND Heavy. So if there's a choice target, Heavy lets me hit on 2+. If I need to move, Assault will let me advance if needed and still shoot.
*snip*
Hit roll modifiers are still capped at +/-1 maximum, so our detachment rule provides that innately. Assault is very useful though. When new detachments start coming out I think the Warden will go up in value quite a bit.
usernamesareannoying wrote:What is tank shock?
*snip*
A new core rulebook stratagem. 1 Vehicle can roll to cause MW when it charges, rolling a number of dice based on it's melee strength characteristic.
usernamesareannoying wrote: are we sure warriors are pointless?
i mean there has to be some benefit to the sheer survivability of them.
Surely whatever they gain from their improved RPs is lost by the fact they have a worse toughness and save?
Not to mention the fact that their only worthwhile weapon means they have to put themselves in both assault and rapid-fire range of their enemies.
Remains to bb seen how often t and save really affects and how much more wounds(=harder to wipe out denying res) matters.
Mortals, anti-infantry etc ignore T and save for example.
Couple necron games i have seen 10th so far 20 warriors been obnoxious to remove
I can see 20 Warriors being a pain to remove with the aid of a Technomancer and a Lord/Overlord. 20 models with a 4+/5+++ that regain d6 models each turn is nothing to sneeze at.
However, I'm just not convinced it's worth it to go that route.
With a character, 20 Warriors within 12" do 10 wounds to a unit of Marines. 20 Immortals do ~14 wounds at 24". That's a pretty substantial increase and at twice the range.
Granted, those Immortals will be less durable as you'll be splitting the characters rather than attaching both to the same unit. However, I think you'll gain far more by inflicting damage than by trying to regenerate incoming damage.
Main things I'm wondering about are if the 3+/4++/5+++ lychguard are as unkillable as they look and if the scarab swarms are a genuine anti-tank tool. I will likely be playing against an Iron Hands list so I will have plenty of opportunity to test both of those things.
As a guard player death marks are the main thing that worries me. They finally seem like solid character assassins and appear to have good anti MEQ firepower.
I can see 20 Warriors being a pain to remove with the aid of a Technomancer and a Lord/Overlord. 20 models with a 4+/5+++ that regain d6 models each turn is nothing to sneeze at.
However, I'm just not convinced it's worth it to go that route.
With a character, 20 Warriors within 12" do 10 wounds to a unit of Marines. 20 Immortals do ~14 wounds at 24". That's a pretty substantial increase and at twice the range.
Granted, those Immortals will be less durable as you'll be splitting the characters rather than attaching both to the same unit. However, I think you'll gain far more by inflicting damage than by trying to regenerate incoming damage.
Just watched the art of war Necrons vs space marines, Richard's Necron list went all in on on a nearly unkillable warrior blob, and to be fair it mostly worked. The part where hellblaster shot at them with Oaths up, and ended up taking more wounds than the warriors was super amusing. The drawback was that it was such a large investment that his offense really suffered, Once John adjusted (IE started ignoring the warriors) Richard spent the rest of the game on his backfoot. The necrons lists mobility also sucked, and Richard struggled to get local superiority away from his warrior blob.
I think the lessons are twofold, going all in on warrior blob is probably a bad idea, arguably a worse idea than not supporting them at all. Second is that necrons have a lot of tricks for mobility, and your going to need them. When an space marine army on foot can outmaneuver you, your going to get absolutely cooked by a more mobile army like Eldar or Tau. Also I'm not sure what silvertide would have done against Orks or a melee focused bug army.
So I’m wondering about cryptothralls. They join a unit and becomes a part of it. So if I take the first wounds on the thralls and they both die, during reanimation can I bring then back since the ”unit” is still alive?
KhazModan wrote: So I’m wondering about cryptothralls. They join a unit and becomes a part of it. So if I take the first wounds on the thralls and they both die, during reanimation can I bring then back since the ”unit” is still alive?
Main things I'm wondering about are if the 3+/4++/5+++ lychguard are as unkillable as they look and if the scarab swarms are a genuine anti-tank tool. I will likely be playing against an Iron Hands list so I will have plenty of opportunity to test both of those things.
I think a detailed battle report is less impactful than just saying the flat truth here: one of the shieldguard units took and survived an entire round of Tau shooting. This unit doesn't do much other than stand on objectives and survive, but good lord does it do that.
I think the doomstalker is what it looks like, just flatly worse than taking three heavy destroyers. Can't hide, can't survive, damage isn't that impressive even when they do survive. Admittedly getting hit with railguns makes it difficult for anything to survive but if I had brought destroyers instead they could have hidden better and would have done more damage.
The reanimator met much the same fate, though I don't feel quite as bad about it. It does have the same problem it always had where it's a different toughness profile than the things that it's buffing so there isn't really a choice in what to shoot at. The reanimator died turn one before getting any reanimates and the lychguard really didn't need it anyways. The opponent conceded turn four as it was clear I was running away hard with the objectives even though I had barely killed any of their units (the scarabs managed to charge in and explode on Shadowsun to score Assassinate though, which was hilarious).
(I should note that this opponent had three hammerheads and the hammerhead named character so my big vehicles getting obliterated isn't entirely a surprise)
Hmm, okay. I love the Doomstalker models, and have 2 of them. Pity they didn't do great. The datasheets gave me the impression they were slightly better than in 9th. I have 1 Heavy Lokhust, but I really don't like how the model looks.
Gonna try both in my first game on Saturday.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Curious about Scarabs. Their self-destruct thing is once per fight phase. I assume this is either yours or your opponent's fight phase? And one Scarab Swarm per unit at a time...
Thinking it might make more sense to take units of 3, rather than 6. They seem pretty trash apart from self-destructing. And 0 OC...
They're really cheap, but I don't know if they're even worth it. The self-destruct is the start of the phase, so maybe hide until you can move and charge a tasty unit, self-destruct 1, hope at least 1 survives the fight, self-destruct 1 more in opponent's turn... Unit of 3 seems more logical.
Arachnofiend wrote: The reanimator met much the same fate, though I don't feel quite as bad about it. It does have the same problem it always had where it's a different toughness profile than the things that it's buffing so there isn't really a choice in what to shoot at.
You have to jam the Reanimator behind a line of sight blocking ruin, then play around its (massive) 12" aura. You no longer need line of sight to the unit to reanimate them. So it is terrain dependent and I can see a world where you take two to cover both table halves.
Hecate wrote: Hmm, okay. I love the Doomstalker models, and have 2 of them. Pity they didn't do great. The datasheets gave me the impression they were slightly better than in 9th. I have 1 Heavy Lokhust, but I really don't like how the model looks.
Gonna try both in my first game on Saturday.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Curious about Scarabs. Their self-destruct thing is once per fight phase. I assume this is either yours or your opponent's fight phase? And one Scarab Swarm per unit at a time...
Thinking it might make more sense to take units of 3, rather than 6. They seem pretty trash apart from self-destructing. And 0 OC...
They're really cheap, but I don't know if they're even worth it. The self-destruct is the start of the phase, so maybe hide until you can move and charge a tasty unit, self-destruct 1, hope at least 1 survives the fight, self-destruct 1 more in opponent's turn... Unit of 3 seems more logical.
I'm planning on always taking units of 3 scarabs. They can keep up with just about anything, and charging in alongside other units that also do a bit of MW damage doesnt seem too bad - either the tank shocking Spyder or a Skorpekh Lord and retinue would do. They should have a decent chance of regenerating as they are always going to be the lesser target compared to anything they are stood next to.
And yes, at the start of any fight phase - so they get to blow up before strikes first units get to attack (once per Scarab unit).
I'm not a fan of 10th ed Necrons to be honest, bit disappointed. Sure we have some good units and good rules but I really dislike the push to include as many characters as possible and have the detachment rule basically rely on having loads of characters in your army. I can't stress how much I dislike this frankly, it is neither fun or fluffy IMO.
Also they ruined Flayed Ones after finally making them good in 9th after decades. Now they're overpriced compared to the rest of the faction and can no longer be taken in squads of 20. One of those two things need to change for them to be any good
Feels like Necrons can play withouth character joining weak units.
Don't use warriors and pay premium to upgrade their BS. Immortals have BS 3+.
Lotz of Skorpekh Destroyers with Stealth enhancement from Lord as only joining character.
Technomancer and Hex Destroyer have Lone operatives. They can boost units with their auras sovereign cronal from enhancement and aura for canoptek units.
Heck. Ghost Arks 125 are much better than 10 Warriors for 120. The only requirement is to put one character (technomancer, hex) inside to field two of them. (dedicated transport rule)
Flayed Ones can infiltrate. How is it bad? Two 5 model units can block enemy first turn move. (if You start You can try to move and charge someting with them turn 1)
Xyxel wrote: Feels like Necrons can play withouth character joining weak units.
Not really. Feels very much like Necrons are a relatively strong faction if you spam characters and a relatively weak one if you don't. In an edition where one of their stated aims was to give players freedom in list building, GW are yet again coercing Necron players into a pigeonhole and not even a fluffy one.
As a Necron player of almost 20 years, seeing our faction become the herohammer army with 5-6 characters on the board is upsetting because that is never how we've played with the possible exception of a period in 7th edition. It's also completely at odds with the lore, where one Overlord will command tens of thousands of warriors in battle... not just a squad lol. But I expect to be shouted down on here just like at the start of 9th edition when I said command protocols were dumb and too restrictive from the very beginning and 6 months later everyone agreed. With that experience in mind I'm not gonna entertain any debate, I'm entitled to my opinions and expect others will think the same sooner or later
Flayed Ones can infiltrate. How is it bad? Two 5 model units can block enemy first turn move. (if You start You can try to move and charge someting with them turn 1)
I didn't say they were bad I said they are overpriced for what they are. In 9th they finally got the points right and in units of 20 they were great.
Cynista wrote: I'm not a fan of 10th ed Necrons to be honest, bit disappointed. Sure we have some good units and good rules but I really dislike the push to include as many characters as possible and have the detachment rule basically rely on having loads of characters in your army. I can't stress how much I dislike this frankly, it is neither fun or fluffy IMO.
Honestly, I don't hate the focus on characters.
It actually reminds me of how I used to play back in 5th edition, where I had 5-6 units of Immortals, each joined by a couple of Crypteks (thanks to the old Royal Court rules). It meant units could be semi-specialised (e.g. having a couple of despair-flamers or 8 haywire shots for anti-vehicle). Not a strong army but a lot of fun to play.
That said, I definitely have some issues with the current implementation:
- I'm not a fan of Crypteks having their WS and BS reduced so that they're reliant on being in a unit in order to have even average stats. That just seems completely backwards to me. I thought the whole point was the leaders improving their unit? Why does the leader also need a unit around to remind him how to shoot straight?
- Speaking of which, I'd have liked to see a bit more differentiation in the Cryptek weapon department. If choice is going to be removed, I think the Chronomancer should have kept his single-shot gun and the Psychomancer should have been given a flamer or something. Instead, they're all rocking midding weapons that really don't serve to meaningfully set them apart.
- The Psychomancer should be cool but his rules remain absolute arse. A -1Ld aura is not all that useful or exciting, even if GW weren't so inept as to have it improve enemy Ld values. And, unlike the others, he does nothing whatsoever to actually buff his own unit.
- The Technomancer wants to be a lone operative... but taking the cloak means he forfeits the only reason to be a lone operative in the first place.
- I hate that there are so many units we're just flat out not allowed to attach characters to at all.
- I'm seriously concerned that we're extremely vulnerable to increases in both character costs and wargear costs (especially the resurrection orb) in future balance patches.
i cant make up my mind if i like this index or not.
Lot of units are unusually weakened like they were designed to have a leader, but there is no leader for them or at least not one that actually helps. Techno feels backwards in his upgrades Lokhust's gun change irritates me to no end. But RP can get absolutely ridiculous if done right and theres a lot of mobility shenanigans. Also i find it funny how last edition we struggled hard against high toughness and now we kinda dgaf lol
Unfortunately probably my favorite unit aesthetically the Doomstalker is just...bad...and that makes me sad lol. That gun is super lack luster for the price and with how weird the techno behaves he cant really buff them easily. Least his little brother is awesome lol
Not really. Feels very much like Necrons are a relatively strong faction if you spam characters and a relatively weak one if you don't.
Can you give examples? Adding Lokhust Lord for 85 to a unit of 3 Heavy Destroyers 135 is worth it?? (the only character able to join them)
Adding Characters to already big units might work only in two or three cases. Trying to build a death star units will only tie up a lot of points in one place.
And you can't add characters (in basic detachment) to units that you would realy want to:
- Flayed Ones
- Wraiths
- Praetorians
Looks like Necron advantage is the ability to heal inv 4++ vehicles. With optionaly Cryptek Reanimator for additional D3, with Technomancers with additional D3 - while Technomancers also improve BS and WS for Cryptek Units (Wraiths) while being a Lone Operative to jump 10" where healing or aura is needed. Seems as a best utility cryptek for some builds.
btw. Lokhust Heavy Destroyers are beatiful? No ramdom damage just straight 6 to murder (safely from distance in cover) enemy heavy elites, stranded characters, vehicles and monsters.
usernamesareannoying wrote: Who would you guys recommend lead a blob of warriors, plasmancer for the 5+ lethal hits or chronomancer for the movement shenanigans?
Something else?
Depends really. The Plasmancer would normally be better off with Immortals unless you have a plan for getting the Warriors up close and fast, and the Chronomancer movement is good but you could be using the bonus movement on a melee unit like Lychguard to set up a turn 2 charge (and stack -1 to hit on top of -1 to wound).
Res orb overlord would always be a safe bet, doubling up activations of reanimation and you could use the free bonus stratagem to res some more each round.
usernamesareannoying wrote: Who would you guys recommend lead a blob of warriors, plasmancer for the 5+ lethal hits or chronomancer for the movement shenanigans?
Something else?
The combo I've been doing is technomancer (5+ Fnp) and lord (res orb, +1 movement, use strats while battle shocked). If I have points left over might add the hypermatter ablator for -1 to be hit and cover from more than 12 away.
The warriors aren't killy no matter how much you buff their offense; what you want is to make them come back faster than the enemy can remove them. Necrons wins by sitting their fat metal butts on the center objective and never leaving.
I played a match with my Necrons last night.
Since all the rules are new I wanted to try out my new toys, sadly my opponent have three armies death guard, admech and knight.... so I got to play knight.
You truly have to bring quite a few dedicated anti-tank guns to a fight nowdays, more than half my army where wounding his troops on 5+ at best.
I think knight will be strong in this edition since you really need alot of heavy guns to counter them. And the 18" flamer is a real pain in the as with the new overwatch strategem
Spoiler:
Illuminor Szeras
Overlord; Veil
Technomancer
10 Lychguard
Plasmancer
Cryptothralls
10 Immortal - tesla
Plasmancer
Cryptothralls
10 Immortal - tesla
10 Warrior
Doomsday ark
Lokhust heavy destroyer
Lokhust heavy destroyer
Triarch stalker
Annihilation barge
Canoptec reanimator
6 Skorpekh destroyers
Illuminor Seraz was fun to try out, will give him another go but I think he is a little bit to prizy.
Reanimator was just amazing, but once my opponent realized what it did he shoot it to bits turn 2.
The block of lychguard were great, untill they failed a battleshock and then they melted since I could not back them up with strategems anymore (you can only auto-pass in the command phase with the strategem)
usernamesareannoying wrote: Who would you guys recommend lead a blob of warriors, plasmancer for the 5+ lethal hits or chronomancer for the movement shenanigans?
Something else?
I think a nice tech for the Chrono is with a 10 man warrior squad inside a Ghost Ark. Get out, move up shoot then use the post shoot move to get back into the G Ark. It's a nice way to hold objectives too, you don't lose out on firepower and they have to kill the Ark and then the warriors that spill out.
A unit cannot embark and disembark in the same phase (page 17)
Properly placed Ghost Ark (more killy, fast and tough than 10 warriors) can hold objective and prevent enemy models to go arround it to score that objective.
Xyxel wrote: A unit cannot embark and disembark in the same phase (page 17)
Properly placed Ghost Ark (more killy, fast and tough than 10 warriors) can hold objective and prevent enemy models to go arround it to score that objective.
Luckily he's disembarking in movememt phase and embarking in shooting.
Also checked and embark isn'' movement phase locked.
Luckily he's disembarking in movememt phase and embarking in shooting.
Also checked and embark isn'' movement phase locked.
Embarking / disembarking is mentioned only in Movement phase, but yesss as a Necron player : ) I would also lean into such interpretation after re-reading.
Luckily he's disembarking in movememt phase and embarking in shooting.
Also checked and embark isn'' movement phase locked.
Embarking / disembarking is mentioned only in Movement phase, but yesss as a Necron player : ) I would also lean into such interpretation after re-reading.
hahah i'm just thinking about having 10 reaper warriors in a GA on an objective and the GA gets charged (but not wrapped) and you disembark, shoot, reembark, shoot the GA every turn, lol. That just sounds so absolutely stupid. (not OP or anything, just hilarious and dumb)
Just played a game with them. A few observations -
- Reanimator is now an incredibly useful support tool. Being able to roll 2D3 RPs for anything within 12" is pretty potent.
- Vehicles also get RP. You can't use the Reanimator on them unless they have the Necron keyword, but being able to just regain D3 wounds isn't anything to sniff at.
- The new Overwatch also triggers on movement. This makes the Doomstalker an incredibly scary unit, as once per turn you can interrupt your opponent's movement with 2-7 S14 shots that hit on nat 5+ due to sentinel construct.
- Tesla + Plasmancer are practically designed for each other. You can also cast Living Lightning when you shoot to get some more damage.
- Explosive scarabs are pretty filthy. Remember that they also have RP, so even if you sacrifice one you can potentially get one back.
- Skorpekh lords are pretty scary. Being able to just throw out mortal wounds on the charge on top of his normal attacks is nasty.
- This may need to be FAQ'd, but RAW it seems that Protocol of the Undying Legions can be used on destroyed units? It says you activate it after an enemy resolves its shooting attacks and you use it on a unit that took casualties. Which would imply that it can technically be eligible for those emergency RPs? I dunno its weird. Maybe you can when a character is leading it.
- Heavy Destroyers with the AT option are still disappointments. They even lost the reroll 1s to hit ability from 9th ed.
- Lokhusts actually received a bit of a nerf this edition, I feel. They are slower and the RR1 for the standard version only works on the closest enemy, I think they lost some AP and strength and you can't merge heavies and standard in the same unit. At least gauss cannons deal a flat 2 damage this time and the heavy gauss cannon (I forgot the new name) packs a punch. If only the damned thing would hit.
- Necrons are a lot slower overall, and none of them have that take and scoot ability like Marines have. This makes taking objectives and board control a little harder, which makes Tomb Blades, Ophidians, Wraiths and Praetorians (which I did not have) a lot more valuable as they can move more than 7".
Automatically Appended Next Post:
usernamesareannoying wrote: Who would you guys recommend lead a blob of warriors, plasmancer for the 5+ lethal hits or chronomancer for the movement shenanigans? Something else?
Abuse the Cryptek's special attachment rule. Stick a lord with a res orb. Stick as many crypteks as you want in the unit.
Here's what that rule says
You can attach this model to one of the above units even if one Royal Warden or Noble model has already been attached to it. If you do, and that Bodyguard unit is destroyed, the Leader units attached to it become separate units, with their original Starting Strengths.
Note that there is no clause about crypteks being in the unit. So unless I'm missing something, RAW, as long as you have one noble in the unit, you can fit as many crypteks as you want.
Now why a Res orb you ask? Because it allows you to activate RP in both you and your opponent's command phase. So you get double the RP procs. Technomancers give the unit they're leading 5+ FNP. Chronomancer reduces all hit rolls targeting that unit by 1
Now stick a reanimator. You now have even more RP rolls (only during your turn, and only D3 as it specifies it. So no, you can't get 2d6 warriors per turn.)
Now stick in a ghost ark to get even more regen.
Now place them on an objective to get D3+3 RPs.
You literally cannot die unless you roll really, really poorly or your opponent dumps every single gun onto them. Even if they kill the ghost ark and the reanimator, you're still getting D3+3 RPs every command phase with 5+ FNP and -1 to hit them.
btw. Lokhust Heavy Destroyers are beatiful? No ramdom damage just straight 6 to murder (safely from distance in cover) enemy heavy elites, stranded characters, vehicles and monsters.
They get one shot with no rerolls. You either need to never move at all (which in a game with a lot of terrain is a problem, and a proper table should have a lot of terrain) or have a lord babysitting them at all times. And remember, lokhust lords have no proper ranged options, so they really are babysitters.
Is there a rule that states that the minimum amount of damage inflicted must be one? Because Implacable Resiliance doesn't give a minimum. So RAW, you can in fact deal 0 damage to an Overlord.
- Vehicles also get RP. You can't use the Reanimator on them unless they have the Necron keyword, but being able to just regain D3 wounds isn't anything to sniff at.
Vehicles do, in fact, have the Necrons Keyword. It's the Faction Keyword. If you look at Keyword line on any dataslate the Faction Keyword is the only place Necrons is listed
So the Reanimator itself has a 4+ FNP and then a 2d3 Reanimation in the controlling players Command Phase. Put it in range of a Res Orb Lord with the Enhancement that makes it a 6" Aura and it can heal itself in the enemy Command Phase as well. Good Luck moving that 20 man Warrior Blob from anywhere.
Lokhust Heavy Destroyers have re-roll of 1 to wound monster.vehicles. That handy as they shoot with S14. Heavy gives them +1 to BS.
Thats pretty good for 45 points imo.
Without any supporting characters or stratagems.
Adding characters to them would only make them a big target and a point sink. Better to get more of them than add characters.
Necron Warriors 20 model blobs.
Yes we can regenerate a lot of them, teleport with Veil, etc., great. But if enemy in killing ~14 of them each turn (my experience) they agre gone after two turns. Especiall in engagement range because they are supposed to hold objectives right?
The rules commentary makes it explicit that you can only use a "join an additional character to the unit" rule once per unit, so you get one noble and one cryptek. This restriction doesn't apply to the cryptothralls since they're not characters.
Interesting thoughts overall but my observations on your observations in bold.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Just played a game with them.
- Vehicles also get RP. You can't use the Reanimator on them unless they have the Necron keyword, but being able to just regain D3 wounds isn't anything to sniff at.
Every unit in the base index (not bothered with forgeworld) gets the ability RP except for Transcendent C'Tan (probably typo but funny).
- This may need to be FAQ'd, but RAW it seems that Protocol of the Undying Legions can be used on destroyed units? It says you activate it after an enemy resolves its shooting attacks and you use it on a unit that took casualties. Which would imply that it can technically be eligible for those emergency RPs? I dunno its weird. Maybe you can when a character is leading it.
I think RAW that you have no unit to use the strategem on if it is dead.
- Lokhusts actually received a bit of a nerf this edition, I feel. They are slower and the RR1 for the standard version only works on the closest enemy, I think they lost some AP and strength and you can't merge heavies and standard in the same unit. At least gauss cannons deal a flat 2 damage this time and the heavy gauss cannon (I forgot the new name) packs a punch. If only the damned thing would hit.
Heavy Lokhusts with the anti-infantry gun seem better than basic Lokhusts, 3 shots AP2 D2 vs 6 or 12 shots +1S AP1 D1, you basically just circumvent -1D abilities. Lokhust Lords give anti-infantry Heavy Lokhusts +1 to hit, sustained hits on 5s as well as 6s. If you are shooting 36 shots with your 135 point unit and moved (to get in half range) you expect to get 30 hits (4.5 points per hit). Add a Lord and you expect 42 hits, 12 more, so 54 points of hits, but he costs 85, so is the other 31 points worth the body, res orb, second half of each strat and situational re-rolls to hit and wound against low strength units?
Abuse the Cryptek's special attachment rule.
Stick as many crypteks as you want in the unit.
Note that there is no clause about crypteks being in the unit. So unless I'm missing something, RAW, as long as you have one noble in the unit, you can fit as many crypteks as you want.
Designer's Commentary limits it to two attached units per bodyguard.
Now stick a reanimator. You now have even more RP rolls (only during your turn, and only D3 as it specifies it. So no, you can't get 2d6 warriors per turn.)
See below.
Is there a rule that states that the minimum amount of damage inflicted must be one? Because Implacable Resiliance doesn't give a minimum. So RAW, you can in fact deal 0 damage to an Overlord.
Designer's commentary states a minimum of one.
Army rule wrote:If your Army Faction is Necrons, at the end of your Command phase, each unit from your army with this ability activates its Reanimation Protocols and reanimates D3 wounds.
Strat wrote:Your unit activates its Reanimation Protocols and reanimates D3 wounds.
Ghost Ark wrote:Once per phase, just after an enemy unit finishes making its attacks, if one or more friendly Necron Warriors units within 3" of this model lost one or more wounds as a result of those attacks, this model can use this ability.If it does, select one of those Necron Warriors units; that unit’s Reanimation Protocols activate.
Reanimator wrote:While a friendly Necrons unit is within 12" of this model, each time that unit’s Reanimation Protocols activate, that unit reanimates an additional D3 wounds.
Warriors wrote:Each time this unit’s Reanimation Protocols activate, it reanimates D6 wounds instead of D3 wounds, unless it is within range of an objective marker you control, in which case it reanimates D3+3 wounds instead.
The way I read all of these is you put your Necron Warriors led by an Overlord on an objective with a Reanimator nearby, you get 2d3+3 from your Ghost Ark, 2d3+4 from your (free) strat, 2d3+3 in your command phase and 2d3+3 in their command phase.
- Vehicles also get RP. You can't use the Reanimator on them unless they have the Necron keyword, but being able to just regain D3 wounds isn't anything to sniff at.
Vehicles do, in fact, have the Necrons Keyword. It's the Faction Keyword. If you look at Keyword line on any dataslate the Faction Keyword is the only place Necrons is listed
So the Reanimator itself has a 4+ FNP and then a 2d3 Reanimation in the controlling players Command Phase. Put it in range of a Res Orb Lord with the Enhancement that makes it a 6" Aura and it can heal itself in the enemy Command Phase as well. Good Luck moving that 20 man Warrior Blob from anywhere.
True, I was thinking of Canopteks vehicles (my vehicles in my list were canoptek), which don't count as necrons, oddly enough.
Fair enough about the Designer's commentary. They should have really put those clauses in the rules themselves though.
Lokhust Heavy Destroyers have re-roll of 1 to wound monster.vehicles. That handy as they shoot with S14. Heavy gives them +1 to BS. ?
They still need to hit and bypass invuls though. In 9th ed they can reroll hit rolls of a 1, which is more reliable than 2+ to hit. As I said, if they move (and you will have to move) they go back to 3+ to hit with no rerolls. Being able to reroll wound doesn't matter if you miss. I found them to be unreliable. They can be potentially lethal, but for 45 a model points I'd prefer something a little more reliable.
They still need to hit and bypass invuls though. In 9th ed they can reroll hit rolls of a 1, which is more reliable than 2+ to hit.
As I said, if they move (and you will have to move) they go back to 3+ to hit with no rerolls. Being able to reroll wound doesn't matter if you miss.
I found them to be unreliable. They can be potentially lethal, but for 45 a model points I'd prefer something a little more reliable.
Oh, another observation - You absolutely need to have some sort of melee unit in your backfield. Getting multicharged can absolutely shut your army down, as necrons are too slow to disengage repeatedly.
This is probably what Skorpekhs and Lychguard are intended for; they are too slow to be decent assault units, but they are fast enough to respond to local threats.
Had my first game today. 1000 points. I took a bunch of different things because I wanted to see what worked best.
I had 2x10 Warriors, and from now on I'm running 20 at a time instead. I got to reanimate 3 in 1 squad. Same turn, the other 10 died so couldn't be reanimated. Just barely all 10... So I would've lost 13 total in that turn, and possibly could've brough back a bunch of them. Lesson learned.
Short-range Warrior weapons are still better.
I need more Immortals. I only have 5, and they didn't achieve much, but seem promising. Deathmarks were great, up on my home objective on top of a building.
Reanimator is nice, but definitely a big target. Doomstalker rolled pretty poorly, but in turn 5 rolled hot and finished off a big tank. The tank that wiped both of my 10-person Warrior squads. Heavy Lokhust took the anti-infantry weapon, as my opponent only had 1 heavy thing. Didn't do that great, really. Killed a couple Intercessors. Not bad, but not great.
Skorpekhs got a turn 1 charge, and minced a unit. Then on opponent's turn 1, they got minced.
Overlords were good. That 2+ save was great.
Wound up winning 25-23.
Question though. Does the Reanimator actually give itself +1d3? The wording says "friendly unit". Can it be its own friend? We ruled "No".
On the whole, I like the new Necrons. Next game I'll try some Scarabs, Tomb Blades, and Crypteks. That's basically all I have that I didn't try today.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Oh! I also have a Doom Scythe, but I think I'll try it as a Night Scythe first. Drop a huge blob of Warriors, Overlord, Cryptek and Cryptothralls on the centre objective turn 1. Should be nasty, especially as I can hide the Scythe behind a building on deployment, so it and the huge blob won't be shot up if the enemy gets turn 1. Overwatch, I guess...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Wait... Did I read somewhere that flyers start in reserves?
The reanimator cannot heal itself, as it does not have the Necron keyword. Its a Necron unit that's not a Necron. Yes, its weird, but that's how it is. It does have RP though, so it can heal itself that way.
But yes, with necron infantry you go big or go home. Necron infantry are usually still only 1W each, and the game is still lethal enough to wipe out small units of infantry, unless they're marines because they have 2w each now.
Blight Drones have a flamethrower that can kill a MSU squad of immortals in a single turn, for example.
They still need to hit and bypass invuls though. In 9th ed they can reroll hit rolls of a 1, which is more reliable than 2+ to hit. As I said, if they move (and you will have to move) they go back to 3+ to hit with no rerolls. Being able to reroll wound doesn't matter if you miss. I found them to be unreliable. They can be potentially lethal, but for 45 a model points I'd prefer something a little more reliable.
2+ has 83% hit rate.3+ rr1 77%'.
You can get them +1 to hit beyond heavy.
Huh, I thought it was higher than that. Fair enough then.
CthuluIsSpy wrote: The reanimator cannot heal itself, as it does not have the Necron keyword.
Its a Necron unit that's not a Necron. Yes, its weird, but that's how it is.
It does have RP though, so it can heal itself that way.
.
All units have the Necron keyword…. It is the faction keyword. If you don’t count the faction keyword the reanimator would do nothing. Or am I wrong?
CthuluIsSpy wrote: The reanimator cannot heal itself, as it does not have the Necron keyword.
Its a Necron unit that's not a Necron. Yes, its weird, but that's how it is.
It does have RP though, so it can heal itself that way.
.
All units have the Necron keyword…. It is the faction keyword. If you don’t count the faction keyword the reanimator would do nothing. Or am I wrong?
Hmm, it seems so. I'm used to Canopteks not counting as necrons. That means that you can repair literally anything with the Reanimator's bubble then.
Yeah, I'm still getting used to the new format. Usually the necron keyword is on the bottom with the others. I didn't see it over to the side until now.
Looks like the Reanimator currently works RAW on anything in range that is friendly, has <Necrons> and the faction rule Reanimation Protocols. So yes, it works on itself, all unit types, and all FW datasheet units too. Only contender for not working right is the Transcendent C'tan who doesn't get a faction rule at all for some reason.
A different question on RP though. Which rule takes priority if you apply Protocol of the Undying Legions on a unit of Warriors? Would the stratagem override the Warriors ability to give them D3 or D3+1 wounds of reanimation, or would the Warriors ability override the stratagem to give D6 (or D6+1 with leader), or D3+3 (or D3+4 with leader) while on an objective? Normally I'd fall back on specific rule > general rule so the stratagem would take priority, but the Warriors ability states they always roll their different set of dice instead of a D3.
Just faced a 30 Lychguard with support characters army. 4++/5+++ with ability like 9th edition to bring back models, then bring back more in Command Phase.
Definitely seeing why Devastating Wounds is important.
At end of game, Necron army was eliminated minus the 30 Lychguard. Wow...
* Every Dedicated Transport unit from
your army must start the battle with at least
one unit embarked within it, or it cannot be
deployed for that battle and will instead
count as having been destroyed during the
first battle round.
Insularum wrote: Looks like the Reanimator currently works RAW on anything in range that is friendly, has <Necrons> and the faction rule Reanimation Protocols. So yes, it works on itself, all unit types, and all FW datasheet units too. Only contender for not working right is the Transcendent C'tan who doesn't get a faction rule at all for some reason.
A different question on RP though. Which rule takes priority if you apply Protocol of the Undying Legions on a unit of Warriors? Would the stratagem override the Warriors ability to give them D3 or D3+1 wounds of reanimation, or would the Warriors ability override the stratagem to give D6 (or D6+1 with leader), or D3+3 (or D3+4 with leader) while on an objective? Normally I'd fall back on specific rule > general rule so the stratagem would take priority, but the Warriors ability states they always roll their different set of dice instead of a D3.
Your unit activates its
Reanimation Protocols and reanimates
D3 wounds. When doing so, if a Necrons
Character is leading your unit, your unit
reanimates D3+1 wounds instead.
I cannot tell based off the wording at the moment. it says it activates its reanimation and reanimates d3 wounds. whether that is just the D3/D3+1 or RP + D3 I don't know. I've seen it argued as the 2nd option on a couple forums but of course cron players would argue that.
Are warriors worth it?
Immortals cost 2pts more per model and have +1T, +1save, +1BS, re-roll to wound, better gun.
Warriors reanimates more, but they take more wounds.
Larger blocks are nice, but I would rather get 2 immortal-units and skip a character for a lower price.
KhazModan wrote: Are warriors worth it?
Immortals cost 2pts more per model and have +1T, +1save, +1BS, re-roll to wound, better gun.
Warriors reanimates more, but they take more wounds.
Larger blocks are nice, but I would rather get 2 immortal-units and skip a character for a lower price.
This is where I'm at as well.
I could *maybe* see them as being more useful for making a push on objectives, as they want to be fighting at close range while Immortals prefer to kite.
However, even then, I'd never want more than a single unit of warriors in a list. What's more, I think it's fair to question whether other units (e.g. Lychguard) would be better at holding midfield objectives.
KhazModan wrote: Are warriors worth it?
Immortals cost 2pts more per model and have +1T, +1save, +1BS, re-roll to wound, better gun.
Warriors reanimates more, but they take more wounds.
Larger blocks are nice, but I would rather get 2 immortal-units and skip a character for a lower price.
Well one thing they do well is soak damage like nothing. Just tried ramming my best anti horde units(10 infernus marines, baal predator, terminators) and despite all efforts maybe 2 models dead start of r3.
As i can't kill entire unit in one go they just survive.
KhazModan wrote: Are warriors worth it?
Immortals cost 2pts more per model and have +1T, +1save, +1BS, re-roll to wound, better gun.
Warriors reanimates more, but they take more wounds.
Larger blocks are nice, but I would rather get 2 immortal-units and skip a character for a lower price.
Well one thing they do well is soak damage like nothing. Just tried ramming my best anti horde units(10 infernus marines, baal predator, terminators) and despite all efforts maybe 2 models dead start of r3.
As i can't kill entire unit in one go they just survive.
20 warriors is 240 pts, 10 lychguard is 190. Same amount of wounds but lychguard just feels lika a harder unit. You can make warriors soak wounds, but the amount of support needed to really makes them stick feels like a to big investment.
But we are only in the begining of 10th so I guess we will see how the meta develops.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just realized that cryptothralls makes every model in the unit fight om death on a 3+…. Thought it only applied to the cryptothralls. Damn that is good!
The scytheguard unit is 3+/4++ with stealth and can put wounds into the cryptothralls for a 4+++. The shieldguard are 3+/4++/5+++. All of these units are OC 2 when near the Command Barge. You may replace Overlords with Lords or add more Cryptothralls to taste, though I don't think putting thralls in the shield units is worth it.
And how much those keep bringing back? Especially enemy turn.
It wasn't that warriors were tough to kill as such(though cryptothralls with 3+ and 5+++ were tough buggers). It's that they came back twice per my turn back so that even when I killed big pile of them the turn ended with barely dent and come necron turn rest came back.
I hit them as hard as I could for 2 turns and they were still unhurt.
I would have rather have had them with 4++ than have 8+ come back in shooting phase and another in combat phase!
Well I'm not necron player but just what I ran into. I simply could not overcome that rate they kept coming back. That was basically 1 objective I flat out can never contest and they could easily reach another objective if I tried to go there. Any attacks spent there turned out to be waste of effort.
And other objective was guarded by 10 lychguard + 10 immortals, other had "just" 6 skorpek+lord. Plus lokust destroyers of both types and couple vehicles for long range support.
tneva82 wrote: And how much those keep bringing back? Especially enemy turn.
It wasn't that warriors were tough to kill as such(though cryptothralls with 3+ and 5+++ were tough buggers). It's that they came back twice per my turn back so that even when I killed big pile of them the turn ended with barely dent and come necron turn rest came back.
I hit them as hard as I could for 2 turns and they were still unhurt.
I would have rather have had them with 4++ than have 8+ come back in shooting phase and another in combat phase!
Well I'm not necron player but just what I ran into. I simply could not overcome that rate they kept coming back. That was basically 1 objective I flat out can never contest and they could easily reach another objective if I tried to go there. Any attacks spent there turned out to be waste of effort.
And other objective was guarded by 10 lychguard + 10 immortals, other had "just" 6 skorpek+lord. Plus lokust destroyers of both types and couple vehicles for long range support.
I don't think warriors have any way to revive more times than the lychguard, they just revive more when they do: you get the necron player's command phase, the enemy's command phase with the res orb, and once more with protocol of the undying legions (this stratagem could be used twice if you got shot at and charged in the same turn). For warriors this would be 3d3+7 wounds healed, for lychguard just 3d3+1. Add another 3d3 to both results if there's a reanimator sitting around nearby.
So yeah, that's a ton of healing either way. If you fail the stat check against the warriors they are definitely never dying, but there is always the worry that the whole strategy falls apart against opponents who don't fail the stat check. The characters are also way more vulnerable to getting sniped in the warrior squad because the lychguard are giving them -1 to wound. A warrior squad without a res orb in it is definitely nothing special.
* Every Dedicated Transport unit from
your army must start the battle with at least
one unit embarked within it, or it cannot be
deployed for that battle and will instead
count as having been destroyed during the
first battle round.
Ah, good catch. Back to the drawing board on that one. I would probably just split one group of 20 into 2, then.
tneva82 wrote: And how much those keep bringing back? Especially enemy turn.
It wasn't that warriors were tough to kill as such(though cryptothralls with 3+ and 5+++ were tough buggers). It's that they came back twice per my turn back so that even when I killed big pile of them the turn ended with barely dent and come necron turn rest came back.
I hit them as hard as I could for 2 turns and they were still unhurt.
I would have rather have had them with 4++ than have 8+ come back in shooting phase and another in combat phase!
Well I'm not necron player but just what I ran into. I simply could not overcome that rate they kept coming back. That was basically 1 objective I flat out can never contest and they could easily reach another objective if I tried to go there. Any attacks spent there turned out to be waste of effort.
And other objective was guarded by 10 lychguard + 10 immortals, other had "just" 6 skorpek+lord. Plus lokust destroyers of both types and couple vehicles for long range support.
I don't think warriors have any way to revive more times than the lychguard, they just revive more when they do: you get the necron player's command phase, the enemy's command phase with the res orb, and once more with protocol of the undying legions (this stratagem could be used twice if you got shot at and charged in the same turn). For warriors this would be 3d3+7 wounds healed, for lychguard just 3d3+1. Add another 3d3 to both results if there's a reanimator sitting around nearby.
So yeah, that's a ton of healing either way. If you fail the stat check against the warriors they are definitely never dying, but there is always the worry that the whole strategy falls apart against opponents who don't fail the stat check. The characters are also way more vulnerable to getting sniped in the warrior squad because the lychguard are giving them -1 to wound. A warrior squad without a res orb in it is definitely nothing special.
Ghost Arcs revive Warriors on demand, the moment they take damage. It's like having the CP for free, and the opponent can't take it away from you unless they kill the GA.
Also 20 Warriors provide 40 OC. 10 LG provides 10.
The really is no question that the best objective capper we have, and arguably the best in the game, is Warriors. I play in a highly strategic meta where playing the mission is everything. I'm very, very high on Warriors for this reason.
Automatically Appended Next Post: That being said, here is something completely different:
So, TSK and The Sovereign Coronal both buff C'tan now days. Have fun with this.
CKO wrote: Do you round down or up regarding half damage with C'tan? (one damage or two damage if the weapon is three damage)
You round up unfortunately. A couple other things about it that are helpful to know are it works on mortal wounds now as they have damage characteristics like anything else so you halve the damage then take that as mortals. Trajans ability and abilities like it that make it so the units characteristics can't be modified ignore half damage so they're something to watch out for.
CKO wrote: You can only take 3 cryptothrall units right?
Yes, rule of three applies
I have a thousand sons army, where I use forgefiends with ectoplasmcannons. One of these guys would get 3d3+12 hits against a 20 warriors-blob thx to blast
* Every Dedicated Transport unit from your army must start the battle with at least one unit embarked within it, or it cannot be deployed for that battle and will instead count as having been destroyed during the first battle round.
Yeah that's a pretty big nerf. The great thing about GAs is that you could just have them support a 20 man squad of warriors. Now you have to buy a 10 warrior squad to use them. GAs should never have been a DT. They don't look like one and work better as a support vehicle, imo.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
CKO wrote: You can only take 3 cryptothrall units right?
Depends, how aggressively are you using them? Reapers are better for offensive plays, ideally with transports or veil, flayers are better for defensive plays or footslogging. They both get 2 shots at 12", its just that reapers hit harder and flayers allow you to throw down some fire from beyond 12", making them better at holding backfield objectives or foot slogging across a long table (because warriors are still so damned slow).
CKO wrote: You can only take 3 cryptothrall units right?
Yes, rule of three applies
I have a thousand sons army, where I use forgefiends with ectoplasmcannons. One of these guys would get 3d3+12 hits against a 20 warriors-blob thx to blast
How are you getting +12? Do they get 3d3+8 shots by default? That seems a bit much.
I have a thousand sons army, where I use forgefiends with ectoplasmcannons. One of these guys would get 3d3+12 hits against a 20 warriors-blob thx to blast
How are you getting +12? Do they get 3d3+8 shots by default? That seems a bit much.
The Forgefiend have 3 ectoplasmcannons each have d3 shots and blast. So each gun fire d3+4 against a 20 man unit. So 3d3+12 against 20 warriors. Models with several blast weapons can get insane in this edition.
Xyxel wrote: Hexmark can't use overwatch in Ghost Ark. Technomancer Cryptek with Lone Operative would be better? (healing vehicles)
It's not about using Overwatch while embarked, it's about being allowed to deploy the GA in the first place. And the Hexmark, contrary to most support characters, does not have to be on the board during the first command phase.
...it's about being allowed to deploy the GA in the first place. And the Hexmark, contrary to most support characters, does not have to be on the board during the first command phase.
"* Every Dedicated Transport unit from
your army must start the battle with at least
one unit embarked within it, or it cannot be
deployed for that battle and will instead
count as having been destroyed during"
- page 56
If You want to deploy Ghost Ark (without Warriors) the Hexmark (or other character) must be embarked.
Yeah, you need to pay the ten warrior or character tax to use a GA now.
Which sucks, but hey, Reanimators are pretty good now.
Still a little fragile, but you can do some pretty cheesy stuff.
Remember that the repair aura procs whenever the RP activates. It doesn't say during your command phase.
So res orbs proc their aura.
Ghost arks are tougher, but their buff only works on warriors and you have to pay at least 165 points to use it, which is 70 points more than the reanimator.
Played a Combat Patrol against AdMech today. I won by a mile (it wasn't even close), but the thing that interested me was the Doomstalker's weapon doing a flat 3 damage now, instead of d6. Second turn, it took out all 3 Kataphron things (whatever they're called). 5 shots, 4 hits, 3 wounds, 3 failed saves. They're 3 wounds each, so bam, unit gone. That's possibly better than I ever did with a Doomstalker in 9th.
So from now on, I'm probably gonna hunt 2 and 3-wound elites first, and go after tanks second. Seems like a good strategy. And with such high strength, most 3-wound models will be wounded on 2+. Getting them out of the way first could save my weaker units.
Yeah Doomstalker is much better in 10th than 9th.
Expect a nerf incoming, because for 125 points its pretty good.
Remember that Overwatch triggers on movement now and you hit on 5s with it. So you can really throw a wrench into your opponent's plans if he tries to be aggressive. Also remember that Overwatch triggers on charge move, not on that unit being charged.
I'm finding that min squads of scarabs isn't worth it. You need a fairly big squad of them to make the most of the Kamikaze - RP cheese, because otherwise they'll get wiped out due to their poor defensive stats.
Incidentally, Doomstalkers still overwatch on 6+ in Combat Patrol. Their datacard doesn't have the special rule. And Scarabs can't auto-explode in CP. They lack that rule, too.
Yea, CP feels like the proper place for competitive play based on in-game skill rather than list building meta chasing.
It also gives them a space to make more fundamental rules changes to units without a public outcry from casual/serious (but crucially, not competitive) players.
Is it possible the same clowns that wrote 10th ed Eldar, might have not balanced Combat Patrol as they claimed?
On Necrons, C'Tan seem very good, it takes a lot to kill one and if you position to only allow a portion of their army to shoot/fight it, you have a chance to live, then you quickly start healing back up to full.
I love the new exploding scarabs!
I've played two games with my Necrons in 10th now. Both games I took 3 max swarms & a Spyder backing each up. + both of the Reanimators I have. So much exploding fun, so much RP annoyance for my foe....
My scarabs have now killed more in these two games than they have since their 2e days.
Their kill counts stand at 1 Armiger, 1 warglaive, 1 Knight Paladin, 1 of the new Ballistrus dreadnoughts, 1 5x unit of Deathwing Termies, 1/2 a Knight Warden{?}, and they share in an assist vs Azreal (they got him down to 1 wound & their spyder finished him off.)
To quote one of the DA player from last night: " ing scarabs."
His partners reply: "You know we're going to keep seeing these damned things, right?"
As for Deathmarks... I've only played 1 game, but they did well. Took out at least as many points as they cost, and lasted all game, though that's because they were high up and out of the way.
usernamesareannoying wrote: So I’ve been looking at deathmarks a lot lately.
What do you guys think of them?
They have one shot less than immortals but otherwise a helluva gun.
I love Deathmarks.
I did last edition as well.
So very often I'll have at least 1 squad in a force.
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Hecate wrote: Good to know Scarabs are actually useful.
They're more usefull right now as my foes don't realize what they can do.
I'm sure they'll lose a bit of effectiveness as my opponents learn to prioritize targets & take out my spyders%reanimators 1st.
After that they'll drop into the fun catagory.
Hecate wrote: Good to know Scarabs are actually useful.
As for Deathmarks... I've only played 1 game, but they did well. Took out at least as many points as they cost, and lasted all game, though that's because they were high up and out of the way.
I'll definitely be taking them again.
Scarabs are good on the condition you don't go MSU with them.
Squads of 3 only mildly annoy the enemy, as you have to sacrifice and they are so squishy that your opponent can just wipe the rest.
Swarms of 9 though? Oh yeah, your opponent is going to hate that.
Hecate wrote: Good to know Scarabs are actually useful.
As for Deathmarks... I've only played 1 game, but they did well. Took out at least as many points as they cost, and lasted all game, though that's because they were high up and out of the way.
I'll definitely be taking them again.
Scarabs are good on the condition you don't go MSU with them.
Squads of 3 only mildly annoy the enemy, as you have to sacrifice and they are so squishy that your opponent can just wipe the rest.
Swarms of 9 though? Oh yeah, your opponent is going to hate that.
I think most opponents will hate being cheated. Scarabs come in units of either 3 bases or 6 bases. No option for a 9 base unit.
Only played one game so far, but really liking Deathmarks. Strongly considering getting a full squad of 10, or a second min unit. PRECISION is so damn useful.
Hecate wrote: Good to know Scarabs are actually useful.
As for Deathmarks... I've only played 1 game, but they did well. Took out at least as many points as they cost, and lasted all game, though that's because they were high up and out of the way.
I'll definitely be taking them again.
Scarabs are good on the condition you don't go MSU with them.
Squads of 3 only mildly annoy the enemy, as you have to sacrifice and they are so squishy that your opponent can just wipe the rest.
Swarms of 9 though? Oh yeah, your opponent is going to hate that.
I think most opponents will hate being cheated. Scarabs come in units of either 3 bases or 6 bases. No option for a 9 base unit.
Huh, so there isn't. Odd but ok.
Still, 6 is still going to be pretty annoying to deal with, especially if you take 3 groups of them.
Hecate wrote: Good to know Scarabs are actually useful.
As for Deathmarks... I've only played 1 game, but they did well. Took out at least as many points as they cost, and lasted all game, though that's because they were high up and out of the way.
I'll definitely be taking them again.
Scarabs are good on the condition you don't go MSU with them.
Squads of 3 only mildly annoy the enemy, as you have to sacrifice and they are so squishy that your opponent can just wipe the rest.
Swarms of 9 though? Oh yeah, your opponent is going to hate that.
I think most opponents will hate being cheated. Scarabs come in units of either 3 bases or 6 bases. No option for a 9 base unit.
Huh, so there isn't. Odd but ok.
Still, 6 is still going to be pretty annoying to deal with, especially if you take 3 groups of them.
I'm not keen on Scarabs, I'd rather spend the points on Warriors/Lychguard, especially if we are talking about taking support (that you weren't already taking, e.g. you might as well say Necrons lists are 1,905 points of options plus a Reanimator).
But, I've only played mixed lists and not yet tried a spam all Warriors/Lychguard list. So yet to be tested and I may find I don't like how slow it is.
What I did with Scarabs in Combat Patrol was there was a strat that gives 1 unit +1 OC, from one Command Phase to the next. So I had my 3 Scarabs sitting on an objective, out of line of sight, and converted 1 CP into 5 VP. Without being able to explode, there was little else they *could* do.
A 10 model unit lychguard with sword and shield, zahndrekh, chronomancer, two cryptothralls is ridiculous. The unit gets -1 to hit, -1 to wound, 4+ inv, cryptothralls have a 4+ FNP, nemesor increases the opponents command reroll strat to 2CP, buffs the entire unit with sustained hits, or lethal hits, or devastating wounds, depending on dice roll. And on top the unit can move after shooting.
1. Does units that cannot be lead by Necron Characters benefit from "the Sovereign Coronal" (aura)?
2. Character leading unit is destroyed and returned by stratagem "Protocol of the Eternal Guardian".
Can the Character be put outside of the unit? Declared to be not joining the unit?
This would give an interesting flexibility to "detach" a Character form the unit if needed.
Lokhust Lord leading Heavy Destroyers is tanking shoots (4++) to protect his shooting retinue. He dies and is ressurected outside of the unit to charge/score objective.
Xyxel wrote: 1. Does units that cannot be lead by Necron Characters benefit from "the Sovereign Coronal" (aura)?
2. Character leading unit is destroyed and returned by stratagem "Protocol of the Eternal Guardian".
Can the Character be put outside of the unit? Declared to be not joining the unit?
This would give an interesting flexibility to "detach" a Character form the unit if needed.
Lokhust Lord leading Heavy Destroyers is tanking shoots (4++) to protect his shooting retinue. He dies and is ressurected outside of the unit to charge/score objective.
1. That is how it is being played RAW and seems to be RAI. But, we are waiting for the first FAQ for all indexes. GW do sometimes pretend to correct a written rule rather than admit they are making a change for balance purposes. And this might be one of those times, as they may have intended it to work on a couple of vehicles, but hadn't logically thought through it working on up to 1,900 points of vehicles.
2. No, it doesn't seem to be optional in the designer's commentary.
If a Leader model is destroyed and subsequently returned to the battlefield, and the Bodyguard unit they were attached to is on the battlefield, they must be returned to that unit to form an Attached unit once more (otherwise, they are returned as a separate unit).
p5freak wrote: A 10 model unit lychguard with sword and shield, zahndrekh, chronomancer, two cryptothralls is ridiculous. The unit gets -1 to hit, -1 to wound, 4+ inv, cryptothralls have a 4+ FNP, nemesor increases the opponents command reroll strat to 2CP, buffs the entire unit with sustained hits, or lethal hits, or devastating wounds, depending on dice roll. And on top the unit can move after shooting.
A good unit to stick a Hexmark behind. Lychguard with support are looking so good that I'm thinking it might even be worthwhile taking scythes instead of shields, the Cryptothralls are tanking the first shots anyway.
2. Character leading unit is destroyed and returned by stratagem "Protocol of the Eternal Guardian".
Can the Character be put outside of the unit? Declared to be not joining the unit?
This would give an interesting flexibility to "detach" a Character form the unit if needed.
Lokhust Lord leading Heavy Destroyers is tanking shoots (4++) to protect his shooting retinue. He dies and is ressurected outside of the unit to charge/score objective.
An attached character cannot tank shots for his unit. All wounds must be allocated to the bodyguards, exception is precision. See core rules leader p.39.
Reanimation Protocols were never extremely complicated before 10th edition. It happened when it happened and that was it. Now, game size and so on have a much greater effect.
Take a 500 point game level. Or rather, start at the lowest of all costs. Basic Warriors reanimate once per turn for d3 wounds, objectives not withstanding. So far, so good. Simple, concise, and clear.
Increasing the amount spent by one step, two bodies of 10 Warriors each and 1 Ghost Ark cost just under 400 points. A pretty decent little gunline. Starting d3 oer turn becomes 1d3 plus an additional 1d3 every phase that the unit is attacked. Better minds than mine will have to parse and conjugate exactly what and when "once per phase , just after an enemy unit finished making its attacks" means. The number of triggers in that conditional grows if a "psychic attack" occurs or some out of phase shenanigans happen. I can see the discussions of exactly what constitutes an "ATTACK" coming a mile away.
At that level, it's still not a strategic consideration though. Take it up another step or so and things happen.
Two or three bodies of 20 Warriors each, each one being led by a Cryptek, with one Ghost Ark plus one Canoptek Reanimator and one Lord with Ressurection Orb and our Reanimation Protocols becomes a reanimation swamp. That's just around 1,200 points. Reanimator adds to the basic 1d3 with the Ark plus the Orb means you could lawyerly opportune to reanimate in a growing number of phases scattered throughout his turn and a number of yours.
Hexmark Destroyers added in there to sixgun back repeatedly every time a volley hits any Warriors is gonns be fun to watch. ((new guard manual protocol - "For the Emperor' sake, men, don't shoot the Warriors. Ever! Stab them in the eye.")
A realistic army does not consist of 100% Elite Special Ops units. The basic footslogging grunts outnumber the experts by a lot (imagine a planet-wide assault on Armageddon). That 1,200 point walking reanimation factory is most likely to be the backbone of the phalanx, especially If each warrior gets a 5+ FNP from the League (Legion?) of Technomancers.
Where and when do we begin worrying about reanimating the grunts?
So far it doesn't seem to be too strong, but nerfs to other factions could change that.
The avenues for correction are:
- Increase the points on the beneficiaries of RP.
- Increase the points on the providers of RP.
- Change datasheets to reduce the amount of RP.
TomWilton wrote: Reanimation Protocols were never extremely complicated before 10th edition. It happened when it happened and that was it. Now, game size and so on have a much greater effect.
Take a 500 point game level. Or rather, start at the lowest of all costs. Basic Warriors reanimate once per turn for d3 wounds, objectives not withstanding. So far, so good. Simple, concise, and clear.
Increasing the amount spent by one step, two bodies of 10 Warriors each and 1 Ghost Ark cost just under 400 points. A pretty decent little gunline. Starting d3 oer turn becomes 1d3 plus an additional 1d3 every phase that the unit is attacked. Better minds than mine will have to parse and conjugate exactly what and when "once per phase , just after an enemy unit finished making its attacks" means. The number of triggers in that conditional grows if a "psychic attack" occurs or some out of phase shenanigans happen. I can see the discussions of exactly what constitutes an "ATTACK" coming a mile away.
At that level, it's still not a strategic consideration though. Take it up another step or so and things happen.
Two or three bodies of 20 Warriors each, each one being led by a Cryptek, with one Ghost Ark plus one Canoptek Reanimator and one Lord with Ressurection Orb and our Reanimation Protocols becomes a reanimation swamp. That's just around 1,200 points. Reanimator adds to the basic 1d3 with the Ark plus the Orb means you could lawyerly opportune to reanimate in a growing number of phases scattered throughout his turn and a number of yours.
Hexmark Destroyers added in there to sixgun back repeatedly every time a volley hits any Warriors is gonns be fun to watch. ((new guard manual protocol - "For the Emperor' sake, men, don't shoot the Warriors. Ever! Stab them in the eye.")
A realistic army does not consist of 100% Elite Special Ops units. The basic footslogging grunts outnumber the experts by a lot (imagine a planet-wide assault on Armageddon). That 1,200 point walking reanimation factory is most likely to be the backbone of the phalanx, especially If each warrior gets a 5+ FNP from the League (Legion?) of Technomancers.
Where and when do we begin worrying about reanimating the grunts?
In fairness, I think this list has a fair few weaknesses.
For one, you're spending a *lot* of points on Warriors - a unit that gets to choose between a decent gun with the range of a pistol, or a garbage gun with the range of an actual gun.
What's more, while the Warriors may be quite resilient, the same cannot be said for the Reanimators and Ghost Arks. Thus, an opponent will likely target those first to deplete the resilience of the warriors, before targeting them directly.
Thanks for the answers. Some usable info and some fluff was asked for and given,
appreciated,
- Tom
ps - I know that I have a lot to learn.
So, I'm suggesting a potential Reinforcement of 405 points using all the tricks for you to shoot down (figuratibely).
one Night Scythe unit (1 figure) consisting of Night Scythe 145
one Lychguard unit (9 figures) consisting of
= 5 Lychguard 2 wounds each 3+/4++/5+++ 95
= 2 Cryptothralls 2 wounds each 3+/4+++ 40
= 1 Technomancer w/node 4 wounds 3+/4+++ 60
= 1 Lord w'ResOrb 4 wounds 3+/4+++ 65
all 9 benefit from RP, Systemic Vigour, The Lord's Will, Guardian Protocols, and Orb/Tech enhanced RP, 4 different infantry models (for the tech ability!) that will survive suffering 17 unsaved wounds to RP back to full strength within two turns, 2+ to hit, -2 to be wounded.
Let's see if I understood all I read above on the last six pages about 40K Necron Tactics,
What's more, while the Warriors may be quite resilient, the same cannot be said for the Reanimators and Ghost Arks. Thus, an opponent will likely target those first to deplete the resilience of the warriors, before targeting them directly.
While indirect is all the rage not everyone has indirect that can effortlessly remove those.
Now that you don't need los for them they and key characters are behind ruins.
one Lychguard unit (9 figures) consisting of
= 5 Lychguard 2 wounds each 3+/4++/5+++ 95
= 2 Cryptothralls 2 wounds each 3+/4+++ 40
= 1 Technomancer w/node 4 wounds 3+/4+++ 60
= 1 Lord w'ResOrb 4 wounds 3+/4+++ 65
all 9 benefit from RP,
So its pumping 165 points to make 95 points more effective?? Killing 5 Lychguard models even with all those upgrades is not hard.
Can Lychugard be RP if all of them are killed?
Such tasty unit will be focussed with Oath of the moment and deleted in one turn, sorry.
one Lychguard unit (9 figures) consisting of
= 5 Lychguard 2 wounds each 3+/4++/5+++ 95
= 2 Cryptothralls 2 wounds each 3+/4+++ 40
= 1 Technomancer w/node 4 wounds 3+/4+++ 60
= 1 Lord w'ResOrb 4 wounds 3+/4+++ 65
all 9 benefit from RP,
So its pumping 165 points to make 95 points more effective?? Killing 5 Lychguard models even with all those upgrades is not hard.
Can Lychugard be RP if all of them are killed?
Such tasty unit will be focussed with Oath of the moment and deleted in one turn, sorry.
1). Thank you for explaining that in a clear concise not a sarcastic and pedantic way.
2). Take the same unit and put it anywhere near a reanimator and "oath of moment" would take over 100 points of successful wounding to bring it anywhere near 17 points of damage
one Lychguard unit (9 figures) consisting of
= 5 Lychguard 2 wounds each 3+/4++/5+++ 95
= 2 Cryptothralls 2 wounds each 3+/4+++ 40
= 1 Technomancer w/node 4 wounds 3+/4+++ 60
= 1 Lord w'ResOrb 4 wounds 3+/4+++ 65
all 9 benefit from RP,
So its pumping 165 points to make 95 points more effective?? Killing 5 Lychguard models even with all those upgrades is not hard.
Can Lychugard be RP if all of them are killed?
Such tasty unit will be focussed with Oath of the moment and deleted in one turn, sorry.
In that particular unit, yes the Lychguard could be RP'd so long as the Cryptothralls still live as they count as one singular bodyguard unit (however you would probably want the Cryptothralls to take the hits first so the more likely scenario is you res the Cryptos even after they die).
Personally I'd rather spend more points on bodies before investing heavily into that much support, the example unit clocks in at 260 points, for 240 you could have 10 Lychguard plus a Chronomancer - they would be faster and still have considerable defence.
On a similar note of trying to give clear friendly advice, I'd argue the main point here is to take the max 10 man squad. That gives you durability in itself, and I'd argue that a 10 man unit makes any support upgrades at least twice as good. So if you wanted to try stacking durability support characters, a max squad of Lychguard or Warriors would be my starting point.
Though TomWilton's fast, cheap squad sounds like a very nice build to me!
so warrior blobs...
right or wrong on taking them, how would you recommend moving them?
walk them across the board?
mix of reapers and flayers, all flayers, all reapers?
Just played my first game of 10th the other day and had a lot of fun, simple starter game using the Only War mission. Played against a very aggressive Ork army who won on scenario after four rounds.
Catacomb Command Barge, Res Orb, Staff of Light, Gauss Cannon
Necron Warriors x 20, Flayers, Technomancer with Control Node
Immortals x 10, Gauss Blasters, Royal Warden
3 Units of 3 Scarabs
Lychguard x 5, Shields, Overlord, Tachyon Arrow, Hypermaterial Ablator, Technomancer with Control Node
Nightbringer
Two units of Lokhust Destroyer x 1
Lokhust Heavy Destroyer x 1, Gauss Destructor
Lokhust Lord, Phylactery
Hexmark Destroyer, Sovereign Coronal
Necron Warriors x 20, Reapers, Plasmancer, embarked in Night Scythe
Orks were a lot of Beast Snaggas, can post list but it'll add another hundred lines to the post cuz it's all infantry blobs.
One big warrior blob was a good objective camper but by the end of the round two or three I'd realized it was a lot of points sunk into the only one victory point a round. Splitting into two units of ten might accomplish the same and opens up the Ghost Ark gambit. The Reaper Warriors with the Plasmancer are a lot of fun. I waited until R3 so they could pop in on my opponent's board edge, and that was probably a mistake - I waited too late and they could have had more of an impact on the game. Fair enough, chalk that up to experience.
Lychguard are awesome and my new favorite unit. After tanking some hits from the Nobs and Mega Nobs I activated Undying Legions and ended up with more models than I started the phase with! Picked up another box to make a 10-man squad, despite my best efforts the five Lychguard did die by the end of Round 4. Will also swap out the Overlord's Tachyon Arrow for the Res Orb. Hypermaterial Ablator didn't end up being that relevant, will drop it.
Running squads of single destroyers was a mistake, they died before Res Protocols could proc. I was trying to use them like Tomb Blades, but got the most out of them targeting the closest units of Snaggas.
Immortals performed well. I moved them up to target units on objectives to get their full rerolls but I think that might be a "it's good when you get it" kind of thing, I think they might be better off as the backfield camper than the big Warrior Blob.
Nightbringer was good in 9th, he's good in 10th, he's an awesome model that is fun to paint, overall I love the Nightbringer.
Scarabs lined the alleys between ruins. Fantastic chafe units. Great distraction pieces. Running units of 6 would get the most out of their RP and self-destruct but I wasn't terribly bothered, they were there to slow down the charges on the Waaagh! turn and that's exactly what they did.
We have a rematch later this month so I've made a few changes (and hit up Ebay for some Tomb Blades!):
CB, Res Orb, Gauss Cannon, Staff of Light
Immortals x 10 with Blasters, Royal Warden, Technomancer w/ Canoptek Control Node
Lychguard x 10 with Shields, Overlord w/ Res Orb and Veil, Technomancer w/ Canoptek Control Node
Lokhust Destroyers x 3, with Lokhust Lord with Staff of Light and Res Orb
Lokhust Heavy Destroyer x 2, with Guass Destructor
Hexmark Destroyer
Tomb Blades x 3, with Nebulascope, Shieldvanes, Gauss Blasters
Scarabs x 3, Three Units
Necron Warrios x 20, with Reapers, Plasmancer, embarked in Night Scythe
The idea is for the Immortals and Lychguard to do more of the camping, let the Destroyers and Tomb Blades be aggressive and have the Warrior Blob pop in R2 wherever it can fit on the board.
Tonight all 6 of my CTan + 4 heavy Lokhust destroyers & 2 Lokust Lords with Resorbs (2 destroys × Lord/2 destroyers + Lotd) took the field.
Vs Salamanders.
My Turn : the Lokusts laid waste to a Landraider, knocking the assault centurions out into the open.
The 3 named CTan advanced.
Salamanders turn1:
They wiped out 1st Lokhust squad. :(
Minor damage was inflicted upon the Ctan.
My turn 2:
RP erased all wounds I'd suffered on the CTan.
The named CTan moved into easy/very reasonable charge range of infernus marines, aggressors, & the assault cents.
The remaining Lokhust squad moved to get LoS to a Whirlwind.
The 3 Transcendents then landed via deep strike.
And then the shooting & assaulting began & the Salamanders were crippled with no hope of victory.
Whatever wasn't dead was either BShockrd or didn't matter.
Salamander turn 2: between focused fire, OotM, & some melee, 1 Transcendent was destroyed.
As well as pretty much every other Salamander save 2 termies, 2 Desolators, their Librarian, and a severely damaged Whirlwind.
We called the game at that point since turn 3 would just be mop up & then primary objective farming for the Necron win.
6 Ctan + 4 heavy Lokhusts - a brutally simple army to play & absolutely leathal.
It IS much simpler to run Transcendent CTan in this edition!
usernamesareannoying wrote: so warrior blobs...
right or wrong on taking them, how would you recommend moving them?
walk them across the board?
mix of reapers and flayers, all flayers, all reapers?
i feel obligated to take them as i have 60... lol
I'm mainly approaching this from a theorycraft viewpoint, but 20 warriors, a chromomancer and overlord with the veil of darkness + orb sounds fun.
Your opponent gets exactly one turn to get on objectives, before you reinforce outside 9" of their troops, and move another 5" in the shooting phase.
So if they put a toe into an objective zone, you can (deep strike + move) most of a unit into the objective zone.
Other than that, stacking up a large bunch of reanimation buffs and walking multiple squads across the board seems like the 'obvious' play.
My priority would be getting them onto objectives, so I'd default to reapers. It's not as if blasters will do much outside 12" anyway. And if I'm walking up the board I'm probably assault-moving, so it doesn't matter.
ccs wrote: 6 Ctan + 4 heavy Lokhusts - a brutally simple army to play & absolutely leathal.
It IS much simpler to run Transcendent CTan in this edition!
Monster Mash Necrons sounds really fun. Your list gets up to 1980 pts, anything you'd swap around? Also - how do you get three Transcendent C'tan models? Asking for a friend...
Kalkyrie wrote: I'm mainly approaching this from a theorycraft viewpoint, but 20 warriors, a chromomancer and overlord with the veil of darkness + orb sounds fun.
Your opponent gets exactly one turn to get on objectives, before you reinforce outside 9" of their troops, and move another 5" in the shooting phase.
So if they put a toe into an objective zone, you can (deep strike + move) most of a unit into the objective zone.
Other than that, stacking up a large bunch of reanimation buffs and walking multiple squads across the board seems like the 'obvious' play.
My priority would be getting them onto objectives, so I'd default to reapers. It's not as if blasters will do much outside 12" anyway. And if I'm walking up the board I'm probably assault-moving, so it doesn't matter.
I like this in theory but having to place 22 models out of DS can force awkward or non-ideal placement, especially if your opponent did a good job screening their back points. For that reason although I love my Night Scythe I'm not sure Aircraft are worth it this edition. More games required to evaluate!
Scoring objectives was problematic or Salamaders did not have the time for this between dying? Indeed they lack chaf units for cheap scoring.
PS. No restrictions (almost) in army building produced such army without battlelines or characters (infantry models) LOL
2. Character leading unit is destroyed and returned by stratagem "Protocol of the Eternal Guardian".
Can the Character be put outside of the unit? Declared to be not joining the unit?
This would give an interesting flexibility to "detach" a Character form the unit if needed.
Lokhust Lord leading Heavy Destroyers is tanking shoots (4++) to protect his shooting retinue. He dies and is ressurected outside of the unit to charge/score objective.
An attached character cannot tank shots for his unit. All wounds must be allocated to the bodyguards, exception is precision. See core rules leader p.39.
Cryptothralls become part of the bodyguard unit, they are not characters.
3x2 Cryptothralls and 1 Canoptek Reanimator is very strong.
usernamesareannoying wrote: so warrior blobs...
right or wrong on taking them, how would you recommend moving them?
walk them across the board?
mix of reapers and flayers, all flayers, all reapers?
i feel obligated to take them as i have 60... lol
2x20+10 in a Ghost Ark worked really well for me. I just walked advanced onto objectives and refused to step off, they weren't pretty victories because the Warriors were huge points sinks and didn't kill much, but primaries are primary.
Scoring objectives was problematic or Salamaders did not have the time for this between dying? Indeed they lack chaf units for cheap scoring.
PS. No restrictions (almost) in army building produced such army without battlelines or characters (infantry models) LOL
Transcendent are characters and can have the 4+++ or character aura enhancements, I imagine one of them picked up command.
Ctans cannot be warlords. Their datasheet explicitly denies it, even the TCTan.
The whole Lychguard thing is more of a feelsbad than its actually good. Its a wall, probably the tankiest wall in the game, but its not that fast and only moderately killy. I see the crypthrall thing changing because personally as a necron player i feel dirty even thinking about doing that because it clearly wasnt intended originally since one of the technos gives the unit a 5+++
Vineheart01 wrote: Ctans cannot be warlords. Their datasheet explicitly denies it, even the TCTan.
The whole Lychguard thing is more of a feelsbad than its actually good. Its a wall, probably the tankiest wall in the game, but its not that fast and only moderately killy. I see the crypthrall thing changing because personally as a necron player i feel dirty even thinking about doing that because it clearly wasnt intended originally since one of the technos gives the unit a 5+++
Thank you for correcting me. Cryptothralls were very clearly meant to be the first models you remove, otherwise they'd be character instead of part of the bodyguard unit with an ability that lets them fight on death. I hope that makes you feel better about using Cryptothralls, at least if you are facing some of the more beastly factions or the rest of your army needs help.
The problem is all those units (points!) have the same class of shooting weapons. No anti-tank, no close combat. And OP on Warriors will be wasted if they'll get murdered on the objective (some battlelines fight better in objective range)
Ghost Ark is my favourite so far. More resilient than Warriors, shoots the same, can deal Mortal Wounds (tank shock!) to enemy usnuspecting to be charged by almost dead necron transport
usernamesareannoying wrote: why the hard time killing things with warriors, lack of AP on the flayer, not enough on the reaper or just missed opportunities?
In my very limited experience, I got stuck in melee or advanced to get to objectives. Not having Assault is a big deal for the Reapers I think. On the other hand I just don't see Royal Wardens having any play in Warriors, I'd much rather have an Overlord with a resurrection orb. The edition is young, I don't really know how I want to engage with it yet or whether I am just giving up.
usernamesareannoying wrote: why the hard time killing things with warriors, lack of AP on the flayer, not enough on the reaper or just missed opportunities?
In my very limited experience, I got stuck in melee or advanced to get to objectives. Not having Assault is a big deal for the Reapers I think. On the other hand I just don't see Royal Wardens having any play in Warriors, I'd much rather have an Overlord with a resurrection orb. The edition is young, I don't really know how I want to engage with it yet or whether I am just giving up.
I agree on Royal Wardens, locking the unit out of an orb is a tough one.
A potential alternative to be more aggressive with reaper Warriors though would be to take a Chronomancer as your Cryptek choice and make sure 1 Warrior is carrying a flayer. As long as the unit shoots something, the Chronomancer bonus move can be used, so the single long range gun makes you a lot more mobile. You still probably are not shooting reapers on turn 1, but a double move would help get you set for turn 2 (and move shoot move to avoid combat later on). Something like this:
The Chronomancers Aeonstave has an 18" range, this might be enough to trigger his ability.
I made the observation that warrior squads without a leader should be split into two units of 10 instead of taking a unit of 20. I used the souvereign coronal artifact to buff nearby warriors. Two units of 10 are more resistant against oath of moment than a unit of 20.
(If a unit of 10 warriors ever gets targeted with that ability is a different question, while a unit of 20 definitely will be, especially if it includes character support)
For the CCB, better to take the Staff of Light or Overlord's Blade? I figure if he gets into combat it's because it's been charged by a tarpit or dedicated character/vehicle killer and won't get to fight first anyway.
Same with an OrbLord I want to babysit my Immortals. The Staff of Light isn't a terribly compelling shooting profile but the unit's there for shooting. Thoughts?
Why would you be the one getting charged? The CCB has a movement of 9" and pretty beefy defensive stats + quantum shielding. You'll get more mileage being on the offense with it, a playstyle that synergizes with the Carrier Wave Aura.
Orb Lords have a better reason to use SoL as they are slower, so chances are you won't be able to charge that often with them anyway.
usernamesareannoying wrote: why the hard time killing things with warriors, lack of AP on the flayer, not enough on the reaper or just missed opportunities?
I have not yet played against the top list armies (Aeldari, GSC, Custodes), but against SM, their biggest weakness is that their low AP and single damage make for a poor combination against SV3 and 2W models.
I expect they are much better versus Aeldari and GSC (and nothing is good against Custodes at the moment other than IK or Veterans+OotM).
CthuluIsSpy wrote: Why would you be the one getting charged? The CCB has a movement of 9" and pretty beefy defensive stats + quantum shielding. You'll get more mileage being on the offense with it, a playstyle that synergizes with the Carrier Wave Aura.
That's kind of the point I suppose, I don't expect to be in combat enough for the Warscythe to pay off. Or Overlord's Blade, rather.
Most Indices were updated today, including Necrons. From a quick skim through it looks like:
*Cryptothralls fight on death clarified to affect only Cryptothrall models
*Transcendent C'tan gets even stronger, now has reanimation protocols
*Silent King is a bit less explodey, clarified that Menhirs do not have deadly demise
TC was already a tournament list staple, seems like an overall buff. Shout out if anyone spots anything else that has changed.
*edit - Index card FAQ also updated and summaries changes. A few Ld characteristics and a minor Obelisk change too.
Just wanted to throw this out here, what are people's ideas for kit-bashing/proxying Cryptothralls and/or Transcendent C'tan? I've enjoyed the Ossiarch Bonereaper range, I did a head/weapon swap on the Mortisan Soulreaper and am using him as a Technomancer. Some of the Nighthaunt heroes look like they'd be good stand-ins for C'tan, Lady Olyander in particular. Trying to find a cost-effective stand-in for the Cryptothralls is proving more difficult however!
p5freak wrote: A 10 model unit lychguard with sword and shield, zahndrekh, chronomancer, two cryptothralls is ridiculous. The unit gets -1 to hit, -1 to wound, 4+ inv, cryptothralls have a 4+ FNP, nemesor increases the opponents command reroll strat to 2CP, buffs the entire unit with sustained hits, or lethal hits, or devastating wounds, depending on dice roll. And on top the unit can move after shooting.
Is it not better using a technomancer for the feel no pain against devastating wounds or orikan for the 4+ invuln on the whole squad then switching for other weapons?
Yeah. If an Overlord is leading Warriors, then when all Warriors are dead, the Overlord is no longer part of a Warrior unit, so you can't reanimate the Warriors. So it makes sense to go the other way, too - Overlord gets sniped, the Warrior unit no longer has a leader, can't reanimate him.
Played half of a 2000 point game before we ran out of time. I was losing horribly on points, but stood some chance of bouncing back by just murdering everything.
It was against AdMech. There was a Knight that one-shotted one of my Doomstalkers in turn 1 (they went first), one Reanimator in turn 2, and the 2nd Doomstalker in turn 3... Apart from the Knight, my army was doing pretty well.
Gotta say... Scarabs exploding is awesome. I had 2 units of 6, and they both charged some Dragoons, and took out 2 of them (max explosion damage, a bunch of Lethal Hits). Great cheap unit.
My 20-Warrior squads each had an Overlord with Res Orb. They were both still kicking after 3 turns. Didn't kill that much, but it was enough. If I'd had my turn 3, 1 squad was gonna Veil onto a backline objective and try to kill some Skitarii nearby.
I had only 5 Immortals, but I have GOT to get more. They were surprisingly resilient. They got charged by a melee unit, but it took 3 Fight phases to kill them. I'll still use 20 Warriors, but I'd definitely also like 10 Immortals.
Skorpekhs with a Lord were fantastic. They killed more points than any other unit, and were about to wreck even more. Ended with nearly a full unit, even though they almost got wiped in turn 1.
The Lokhust Heavy was good too. 6 damage on it's big gun is mad. Doomstalkers remain the best choice against Kataphrons. Flat 3 damage is handy.
I tried using a Night Scythe and I was unimpressed.
I think that if I'd gotten the first turn, I might've been in a better position. Most of my units just weren't fast enough to grab objectives, and I kept getting bogged down.
Hecate wrote: Played half of a 2000 point game before we ran out of time. I was losing horribly on points, but stood some chance of bouncing back by just murdering everything.
It was against AdMech. There was a Knight that one-shotted one of my Doomstalkers in turn 1 (they went first), one Reanimator in turn 2, and the 2nd Doomstalker in turn 3... Apart from the Knight, my army was doing pretty well.
Gotta say... Scarabs exploding is awesome. I had 2 units of 6, and they both charged some Dragoons, and took out 2 of them (max explosion damage, a bunch of Lethal Hits). Great cheap unit.
My 20-Warrior squads each had an Overlord with Res Orb. They were both still kicking after 3 turns. Didn't kill that much, but it was enough. If I'd had my turn 3, 1 squad was gonna Veil onto a backline objective and try to kill some Skitarii nearby.
I had only 5 Immortals, but I have GOT to get more. They were surprisingly resilient. They got charged by a melee unit, but it took 3 Fight phases to kill them. I'll still use 20 Warriors, but I'd definitely also like 10 Immortals.
Skorpekhs with a Lord were fantastic. They killed more points than any other unit, and were about to wreck even more. Ended with nearly a full unit, even though they almost got wiped in turn 1.
The Lokhust Heavy was good too. 6 damage on it's big gun is mad. Doomstalkers remain the best choice against Kataphrons. Flat 3 damage is handy.
I tried using a Night Scythe and I was unimpressed.
I think that if I'd gotten the first turn, I might've been in a better position. Most of my units just weren't fast enough to grab objectives, and I kept getting bogged down.
Doesn't that Skorpekh unit end up costing the most out of any of your units as well? I thought the Skorpekh Lord was a little too expensive but I haven't looked into it too deeply. Hopefully your next game will go a full 5 turns. I think someone needs to try out Night Scythe and picking up Immortals with it using the ability to keep them safe and then get a Plasmancer for maximum damage.
6 Skorpekhs is 220. The Skorpekh Lord is 115. So 335 for the unit.
20 Warriors are 240. Overlord is 85. So 325 for the unit.
The Warriors are far better on an objective, but the Skorpekhs dish out way more damage if they don't get blasted first. Having the Lord gives them +1 to hit, meaning Skorpekhs are hitting on 2s. I think that's worth the points.
Automatically Appended Next Post: That said, my Warriors didn't get much chance to shoot. 1 squad got charged by Dragoons on turn 1, and by infantry on turn 2. The other squad was in the Night Scythe.
The issue with the Night Scythe is that it starts in reserves, and then when it comes in, it has to be within 6" of a board edge, with no further move. I didn't realise that until it was too late. I had to then choose to dump the Warriors further away than I wanted on turn 2, or else risk the Scythe being blasted before zooming up and dumping the Warriors somewhere better on turn 3.
I chose option 1, but that meant only 4 or 5 Warriors got to shoot (because 12" range). If I'd gotten to play turn 3, they probably would've deleted some Skitarii.
Turn 3, I quite likely would've deleted 3 more enemy units, leaving just the Knight and 1 other unit. Again, I probably still would've lost on points because of the terrible start, but there was a slim hope.
Probably not using the Night Scythe again any time soon. Its purpose is meant to be dropping Warriors further up the board, but if that can't happen 'til turn 3, it's kind of useless.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just bought a Void Dragon, Triarch Stalker, and 3 Wraiths on sale.
Once they're assembled, gonna have a lot more variety in my army.
I don’t see one near first post, but do we have one of those Rank Every Unit in The Book type things?
For a kind of what’s worth taking and what’s not kind of thing.
It's easy to forget how quickly those Warriors run up in pts. Which is more important for Warriors, Immortals and Lychguard? Cryptek+Cryptothrall vs Overlord with reanimation orb, are any of them viable without character support and are any of them best without character support for cheapness?
Danny76 wrote: I don’t see one near first post, but do we have one of those Rank Every Unit in The Book type things?
For a kind of what’s worth taking and what’s not kind of thing.
I think 1) it's a little early for that and 2) the codex seems very combo-heavy. It'd be a shame to scare someone away from a unit that works in some kinds of lists or to encourage people to spam something that is only good as part of a combo.
The issue with the Night Scythe is that it starts in reserves, and then when it comes in, it has to be within 6" of a board edge, with no further move. I didn't realise that until it was too late. I had to then choose to dump the Warriors further away than I wanted on turn 2, or else risk the Scythe being blasted before zooming up and dumping the Warriors somewhere better on turn 3.
I chose option 1, but that meant only 4 or 5 Warriors got to shoot (because 12" range). If I'd gotten to play turn 3, they probably would've deleted some Skitarii.
Turn 3, I quite likely would've deleted 3 more enemy units, leaving just the Knight and 1 other unit. Again, I probably still would've lost on points because of the terrible start, but there was a slim hope.
Probably not using the Night Scythe again any time soon. Its purpose is meant to be dropping Warriors further up the board, but if that can't happen 'til turn 3, it's kind of useless.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Just bought a Void Dragon, Triarch Stalker, and 3 Wraiths on sale.
Once they're assembled, gonna have a lot more variety in my army.
It's worse than that. They can't disembark in reinforcement step so have to come out t3. There's reason aircraft rarely done and transport aircraft even less.
I have 3 Tomb Blades. Haven't run them in 10th yet, but will give them a go. Maybe grab the least-contested objective. I know in 9th they weren't very sturdy.
Will also try some Crypteks. Haven't used them yet in 10th. Might do like a massive "20 Warriors, 1 Overlord, 1 Cryptek, 2 Cryptothralls" blob. Maybe add a second Cryptek to some Immortals. Possibly a Royal Warden.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Wait, seriously? Ugh. I guess I accidentally cheated then, as I disembarked the Warriors on turn 2!
Yeah, not taking the Night Scythe again. Not even sure about running it as a Doom Scythe, which is what the model is built as.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Question about the Veil of Darkness:
You use the Veil at the end of the opponent's turn, taking your unit off the battlefield. They return in your Reinforcements step. So the question is: Does that unit get to reanimate in that Command phase if they're technically not on the battlefield?
1. Cryptothralls receive +1 to hit from being in Unit lead by Necron Character?
2. Chronomancer looks to be the best Cryptek for blob of 20 Warriors? (gonna try out soon)
Extra 5" each shooting phase make them fast to grab objective early. -1 to hit makes them more resilient than inv or FnP.
-1 to hit has no effect on things that are already -1 to hit for other reasons like firing indirectly. You get a 25% increase in durability against BS 2+, 33% vs BS 3+, 50% vs BS 4+, 100% vs BS 5+, notably this applies to any Cryptothralls in the unit, unless the attacker has sustained hits or lethal hits, which -1 to hit does not affect. FNP is more complicated with a 50% increase against D1, which is as good or better most of the time as -1 to hit, but for 1W models it falls off hard against D2+, the FNP goes further for the Lychguard but does absolutely nothing for the Cryptothralls. Thinking about it I reckon you're probably right that the 4++ is rarely as useful as -1 to hit, since -1 to hit helps against attacks with devastating wounds unlike the 4++. The 4++ feels really great to have though, high AP weaponry just bounces off. You have to consider that you cannot Advance and Shoot, so the 5" move is instead of Advancing, so if you want to make full use of the move-shoot-move then you'd be running gauss flayers, is that a good idea?
Remember that Characters get the buff themselves when inside a unit, Plasmancers can kick ass in melee (somewhat).
Thanks for detailed % analysys!
With Royal Warden such 20 Warriors Blob can move, advance, shoot (gained assault from Warden), move extra 5" from Chronomancer.
So movement between 11"-16" for shooting battleline!
Can damage be taken to Crypothralls first if they are included into Warriors unit due to Cryptek?
Better save and FNP than Warriors and can be reanimated even if both Cryptothralls are killed, yes?
Xyxel wrote: Thanks for detailed % analysys!
With Royal Warden such 20 Warriors Blob can move, advance, shoot (gained assault from Warden), move extra 5" from Chronomancer.
So movement between 11"-16" for shooting battleline!
Can damage be taken to Crypothralls first if they are included into Warriors unit due to Cryptek?
Better save and FNP than Warriors and can be reanimated even if both Cryptothralls are killed, yes?
Yes, Cryptothralls are the same unit as the Warriors. Like if you have a unit of Canoptek Wraiths where some of them have whip coils and some have claws, you can pick off the least useful ones first (or in this case the ones with FNP to then recover them later). Cryptothralls are not counted as a separate unit unlike characters, it's really wonky and I honestly think it should be fixed, you should not get to tank with the Cryptothralls until the Warriors are dead. I doubt the Warden wins against the Overlord, the free Stratagem and resurrection orb is too good, that's 10 extra Warriors each battle round, maybe you find it to be overkill though.
Withouth shooting such unit of 20 Warriors cannot do extra 5" move (Chronometron rule) so the Chronomancer would be less synergic with Overlord (instead of Warden granting assault rule).
Gotta try if extra mobility is worth less survivability.
Chronomancer should be chosen if your intention for a particular unit is to advance quickly up the board turn 1 or 2.
It really cannot be evaluated outside of the context of your army’s individual plans for victory for each mission type and whether you will need 5” guaranteed movement (assuming an eligible target).
On paper and in a vacuum, it is artificially worse than alternative HQs.
I’ve run them quite a bit and found them really useful for the various board location-specific secondaries and for contesting/holding the No Man’s Land Objectives as of turn 1.
I've updated the 1st post with some general info that might be useful for anyone who wants a quick catch up/newer players unfamiliar with Necrons in 10th so far.
Shout out if there is anything you think I've missed that would be important for new players to be aware of and I'll add it in.
Xyxel wrote: 1. Cryptothralls receive +1 to hit from being in Unit lead by Necron Character?
2. Chronomancer looks to be the best Cryptek for blob of 20 Warriors? (gonna try out soon)
Extra 5" each shooting phase make them fast to grab objective early. -1 to hit makes them more resilient than inv or FnP.
I run a Silver Tide list with 40 Warriors and 10 Immortals as its core and the Illuminor between them all. Warriors have the "Aggressor" build = Plasmancer and Warden....no Cryptothralls
Immortalls usually have Plasmancer + Chrono or the Traveller. Getting Auto wounds on 5s and 6s with 80 Warrior shots and however many Tesla Immortal shots is really nice. Warden allows an advance each move.
Da-Rock wrote: I run a Silver Tide list with 40 Warriors and 10 Immortals as its core and the Illuminor between them all. Warriors have the "Aggressor" build = Plasmancer and Warden....no Cryptothralls
With the additional auto-wounds, Flayers are probably more useful. AP-1 this edition is rarely useful in WTC as most targets are SV3 with a wasted cover bonus.
Mine hangs out just within range but behind cover, preferably out of LoS, as much as possible.
When this isn't possible I rely upon that old saying about the best defense being a good offense & hope what I'm actually attacking with provides a more tempting target than the Reanimator.
Lychguard are cheaper, seem to do more damage, and can be led by a bunch of characters for that useful +1 to hit. They seem better than Praetorians on every count.
Am I missing something?!
I notice Praetorians are faster and have the Fly keyword, but is that enough to justify them?
I already have Skorpekhs and Wraiths for melee. (Just bought the Wraiths, haven't used them yet.) If I wanted a mostly-melee list, would I be better off adding Lychguard or Praetorians? The numbers say Lychguard.
Thoughts?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Like, if the faster Skorpekhs and Wraiths took the fight to the enemy, while the Lychguard mostly just capped objectives in the same way Warriors would (tar pit)..?
Hecate wrote: Okay, question about Lychguard vs Praetorians.
Lychguard are cheaper, seem to do more damage, and can be led by a bunch of characters for that useful +1 to hit. They seem better than Praetorians on every count.
Am I missing something?!
I notice Praetorians are faster and have the Fly keyword, but is that enough to justify them?
I already have Skorpekhs and Wraiths for melee. (Just bought the Wraiths, haven't used them yet.) If I wanted a mostly-melee list, would I be better off adding Lychguard or Praetorians? The numbers say Lychguard.
Thoughts?
Automatically Appended Next Post: Like, if the faster Skorpekhs and Wraiths took the fight to the enemy, while the Lychguard mostly just capped objectives in the same way Warriors would (tar pit)..?
You're missing nothing really. Praetorians have a decent enough datasheet and a small squad with either loadout would make a good deepstriking utility unit, but they are way overcosted for what they do. Lychguard on the other hand excel at exactly what you highlight - cap objectives, tar pit stuff and just generally be incredibly tough for a much more reasonable price.
Damage wise praetorian dam2 outweights lychguard dam1. Of course could go with warscythe but then you have slow unit wrth reduced durability when point of lychguard is durability.
But not sure fast meq melee killer is highest priority. Those die to shooting generally
Praetorians shouldn't be compared to Lytchguard, they fill very different slots in the army. Lytchgaurd's whole thing is durability to protect a Lord. Yes they can have good output in combat but they need to get there first.
Preatorians are closer to Wraiths. They can move fast (for Necrons), have Deep Strike with re-roll charges, and have an actual Ranged Attack. Assuming a 5 man, you can have 15 attacks with Devastating Wound from the Pistol. Wraith, in a 3 man, can have the same but with less output from less shots. In Melee they are very similar (Void Blades vs Claws) The Wraiths advantage is better durability with its 4++
EightFoldPath wrote: Praetorians are overcosted at 135, Lychguard are undercosted* at 95, characters are undercosted* which benefits units that can have them attached.
* Note that as this would be relative to other factions, undercosted could mean correctly costed depending on how game wide balance is handled.
This is of course ignoring the no weapon costs power level elephant in the room.
How much do you think warscythes need to come down to be equally viable to shields? Alternatively how much would the rules for warscythes need to be improved to be equal to shields. It's not like shields have amazing rules this edition, it's just because of multiplicative reasons they're better at the moment right? Wouldn't min-size scythes be better than min-size shields?
EightFoldPath wrote: Praetorians are overcosted at 135, Lychguard are undercosted* at 95, characters are undercosted* which benefits units that can have them attached.
* Note that as this would be relative to other factions, undercosted could mean correctly costed depending on how game wide balance is handled.
This is of course ignoring the no weapon costs power level elephant in the room.
How much do you think warscythes need to come down to be equally viable to shields? Alternatively how much would the rules for warscythes need to be improved to be equal to shields. It's not like shields have amazing rules this edition, it's just because of multiplicative reasons they're better at the moment right? Wouldn't min-size scythes be better than min-size shields?
Avoiding the hypothetical of ‘What If weapons had granular costs again’, I don’t think any increase in warscythe stats would materially affect whether they get taken in the same way. Lychguard are popular now due to the survivability including shields. If Scythes were buffed enough, then possibly we would see 3rd squads being taken with Scythes in addition to singular or double squads with shields—or some other unit would have to take over the Objective Babysitting role so you could max out on 2 or 3 squads of scythe-guard.
I think you would still run into delivery problems as Lychguard are quite slow moving and lack any kinds of charge re-rolls, +distance, and fight first mechanics.
EightFoldPath wrote: Praetorians are overcosted at 135, Lychguard are undercosted* at 95, characters are undercosted* which benefits units that can have them attached.
* Note that as this would be relative to other factions, undercosted could mean correctly costed depending on how game wide balance is handled.
This is of course ignoring the no weapon costs power level elephant in the room.
How much do you think warscythes need to come down to be equally viable to shields? Alternatively how much would the rules for warscythes need to be improved to be equal to shields. It's not like shields have amazing rules this edition, it's just because of multiplicative reasons they're better at the moment right? Wouldn't min-size scythes be better than min-size shields?
1) ?? Both options cost zero pts. So I'm not sure what you're talking about by warscythes "coming down".
2) Scythes & shields do completely different things. One increases the damage output, the other aids in survivability. You'd probably have to boost the scythes ap &/or damage quite unreasonably to be more usefull than the unit surviving in the 1st place.
3) shields have the same nice rule now as they did last edition. A 4++ save.
Very usefull when hoofing it across the field or when tying up melee things with high ap.
And now that units also accompanied by multiple buffing characters.
10 shield toting LG buffed have a 3+ save, a 4++ save, FNP, res protocols, bonuses on res protocols, 30 attacks that hit & (generally) wound on 3s, maybe 4s at a decent AP... am I missing anything?
That's adds up to a damned hard unit to remove.
4) Wich is better: min sized scyth unit or min sized shield unit?
Shields.
I'd prefer more survivability vs more damage/ap.
But I also would never field a minimum sized squad of either type.
Especially not if for some reason I'd chosen scythes.
Especially ++ not if scythes got ramped up.
My opponent will see that big damage unit coming & throw enough firepower with enough ap at it to wipe it out or, if maxed, reduce it down to about min size.
Lychguard could become 17 pts and shields could cost 2 pts, or 18 and 1, I'm trying to understand how much stronger shields are. It sounds like sieGermans thinks it's a big valley if it's not just a question of adding 1 to AP and S.
Don't act like you can't compare Lychguard units with different weapon options ccs, you are being silly. They are the same unit, with a different wargear option.
Shields don't add 1 to saves like they did in 9th, warscythes got devastating wounds and the difference between AP 2 and 3 is bigger than the difference between AP 3 and 4 for math reasons I can go into if anyone is interested.
My logic is that warscythes ought to be relatively better in 10th compared to shields than they were in 9th. From a logical standpoint, I think we should be seeing warscythes, not shields dominating the tournament scene. Shields were the weaker option in 8th and this is the best warscythes have been and the worst shields have been.
I think warscythe Lychguard deserve a second look, losing a unit of them isn't a big deal and their survivability is higher than ever.
vict0988 wrote: Lychguard could become 17 pts and shields could cost 2 pts, or 18 and 1, I'm trying to understand how much stronger shields are. It sounds like sieGermans thinks it's a big valley if it's not just a question of adding 1 to AP and S.
Don't act like you can't compare Lychguard units with different weapon options ccs, you are being silly. They are the same unit, with a different wargear option.
Shields don't add 1 to saves like they did in 9th, warscythes got devastating wounds and the difference between AP 2 and 3 is bigger than the difference between AP 3 and 4 for math reasons I can go into if anyone is interested.
My logic is that warscythes ought to be relatively better in 10th compared to shields than they were in 9th. From a logical standpoint, I think we should be seeing warscythes, not shields dominating the tournament scene. Shields were the weaker option in 8th and this is the best warscythes have been and the worst shields have been.
I think warscythe Lychguard deserve a second look, losing a unit of them isn't a big deal and their survivability is higher than ever.
I think if I understand the point one of the issues is delivery; either pop them in reserves or put them in a Night Scythe (and then put the Night Scythe in reserves cuz aircraft). It seems like the common wisdom is to keep dedicated melee units off the table until you can plop them where they need to go, which is why Deep Strike is so hot.
vict0988 wrote: How much do you think warscythes need to come down to be equally viable to shields? Alternatively how much would the rules for warscythes need to be improved to be equal to shields. It's not like shields have amazing rules this edition, it's just because of multiplicative reasons they're better at the moment right? Wouldn't min-size scythes be better than min-size shields?
For Lychguard 2 attacks per scythe is really bad, so a 50% boost to 3 attacks would be the first thing they could consider. At that point I would be tempted to attach Orikan to get a 4++ (but lose out on a 5+++ because of that) and use as a counterpunch unit. But I agree with you that shields combine so much better with everything else the army is doing that 3 attacks might not fix it and they'd have to look at 4 attacks (or 3 attacks and improving S or AP). Maybe adding the 4th attack via a detachment rule rather than a datasheet change.
vict0988 wrote: Lychguard could become 17 pts and shields could cost 2 pts, or 18 and 1, I'm trying to understand how much stronger shields are. It sounds like sieGermans thinks it's a big valley if it's not just a question of adding 1 to AP and S.
Don't act like you can't compare Lychguard units with different weapon options ccs, you are being silly. They are the same unit, with a different wargear option.
Shields don't add 1 to saves like they did in 9th, warscythes got devastating wounds and the difference between AP 2 and 3 is bigger than the difference between AP 3 and 4 for math reasons I can go into if anyone is interested.
My logic is that warscythes ought to be relatively better in 10th compared to shields than they were in 9th. From a logical standpoint, I think we should be seeing warscythes, not shields dominating the tournament scene. Shields were the weaker option in 8th and this is the best warscythes have been and the worst shields have been.
I think warscythe Lychguard deserve a second look, losing a unit of them isn't a big deal and their survivability is higher than ever.
I think if I understand the point one of the issues is delivery; either pop them in reserves or put them in a Night Scythe (and then put the Night Scythe in reserves cuz aircraft). It seems like the common wisdom is to keep dedicated melee units off the table until you can plop them where they need to go, which is why Deep Strike is so hot.
Delivery is only an issue if you are prioritising them fighting. Lycheguard are incredibly durable - you can walk them up the board, camp an objective, and dare your opponent to try and shift them.
As an example:
*A Lycheguard costs the same as an Intercessor. Using the basic no frills bolt rifle profile (bs3+, s4, ap-1), it would take 120 attacks to kill 10 basic Intercessors, or 180 shots to kill 10 Lycheguard on average (either type as the shield gives no help against ap-1).
*Add a Technomancer and you get -1 to wound rolls and FNP. It now takes 540 bolt rifle shots to shift the 10 Lycheguard. Odds are your opponent doesn't have that firepower lying around, so you don't die in one turn (reanimation protocols kicks in).
*Add an Overlord and you get both a res orb and a free strat activation - use protocol of the undying legions and you get 3 reanimations on the unit per battle round.
*Now add some Cryptothralls on top and you see where this is going (about 684 bolt rifle shots FYI).
*In all of the above, the extras you add cost way less than adding another 10 Lycheguard to your army, but add more than 10 Lycheguard worth of durability so are worth it.
The shields are only considered better as they protect against high AP/high damage attacks that could bust through the other defences more efficiently - but if you want to play Scytheguard go for it and just accept that you have merely the 2nd most durable unit available.
Also - Nightscythe is not a delivery service unless you plan on turn 3 charges. Turn 1 off the board, turn 2 on a table edge, turn 3 dissembark/move/charge. You may as well strategic reserve them.
vict0988 wrote: Lychguard could become 17 pts and shields could cost 2 pts, or 18 and 1, I'm trying to understand how much stronger shields are. It sounds like sieGermans thinks it's a big valley if it's not just a question of adding 1 to AP and S.
Don't act like you can't compare Lychguard units with different weapon options ccs, you are being silly. They are the same unit, with a different wargear option.
Shields don't add 1 to saves like they did in 9th, warscythes got devastating wounds and the difference between AP 2 and 3 is bigger than the difference between AP 3 and 4 for math reasons I can go into if anyone is interested.
My logic is that warscythes ought to be relatively better in 10th compared to shields than they were in 9th. From a logical standpoint, I think we should be seeing warscythes, not shields dominating the tournament scene. Shields were the weaker option in 8th and this is the best warscythes have been and the worst shields have been.
I think warscythe Lychguard deserve a second look, losing a unit of them isn't a big deal and their survivability is higher than ever.
I think if I understand the point one of the issues is delivery; either pop them in reserves or put them in a Night Scythe (and then put the Night Scythe in reserves cuz aircraft). It seems like the common wisdom is to keep dedicated melee units off the table until you can plop them where they need to go, which is why Deep Strike is so hot.
Delivery is only an issue if you are prioritising them fighting. Lycheguard are incredibly durable - you can walk them up the board, camp an objective, and dare your opponent to try and shift them.
.
As an example:
*A Lycheguard costs the same as an Intercessor. Using the basic no frills bolt rifle profile (bs3+, s4, ap-1), it would take 120 attacks to kill 10 basic Intercessors, or 180 shots to kill 10 Lycheguard on average (either type as the shield gives no help against ap-1).
*Add a Technomancer and you get -1 to wound rolls and FNP. It now takes 540 bolt rifle shots to shift the 10 Lycheguard. Odds are your opponent doesn't have that firepower lying around, so you don't die in one turn (reanimation protocols kicks in).
*Add an Overlord and you get both a res orb and a free strat activation - use protocol of the undying legions and you get 3 reanimations on the unit per battle round.
*Now add some Cryptothralls on top and you see where this is going (about 684 bolt rifle shots FYI).
*In all of the above, the extras you add cost way less than adding another 10 Lycheguard to your army, but add more than 10 Lycheguard worth of durability so are worth it.
The shields are only considered better as they protect against high AP/high damage attacks that could bust through the other defences more efficiently - but if you want to play Scytheguard go for it and just accept that you have merely the 2nd most durable unit available.
Also - Nightscythe is not a delivery service unless you plan on turn 3 charges. Turn 1 off the board, turn 2 on a table edge, turn 3 dissembark/move/charge. You may as well strategic reserve them.
All good points, but I think the point about Techomancer/Overlord/Orb/Cryptothralls apply to any unit they join - Lychguard have the same toughness as Immortals and the same number of wounds as 20 Warriors. The shields do some heavy lifting for me, particularly against multi-damage weapons I like not having to rely on individual 5+++.
I do dig 20 warscythes attacks with Devastating Wounds, quick math works out 18.51 wounds against MEQ (~3.13 being mortals) vs 8.89 wounds from hyperphase swords. That said a unit of Rod Praetorians will give you similar results (albeit without Devastating).
I agree with your point about the Night Scythe, I tried to make it work in a few games but Aircraft are in a rough space this edition.
Neither immortal nor warrior have -1 to wound though.
Which stops unit i have that would wipe 10 immortals and 20 warriors, fully buffed, with overkill, from killing lychguard in one go. Then they res back.
It's not just shield that matters. And it all adds up to point very few single unit can wipe off in one go. And if you don't wipe in one go rp kicks in.
I'll admit, I was comparing Lychguard and Praetorians because the models look so similar. Didn't realise they filled different niches.
As for the Night Scythe... Instinct says it should make things quicker, but it'd be turn 3 before it can deliver a unit onto a key location. That's just not good enough, generally.
Seems a 10-person Lychguard unit is cheaper than 20 Warriors, so may be the best "sit on an objective" unit. Like, have a heavy unit on your home objective (Doomstalker, Deathmarks etc.), then advance the Lychguard onto the centre objective, if possible. They seem to be a good choice for victory points rather than killing stuff. Better than Warriors, maybe.
Of course, they're not available on the Australian GW site, so it's kind of moot right now.
Definitely want 10 Lychguard now. Played a game today, and yet again my Warrior blob wasn't hugely effective, simply because of getting charged early on. They were okay, but not great.
But a Lychguard blob would be fine getting charged. They'd probably survive, then could do actual damage back.
My Warriors have wound up in early melees in pretty much every game of 10th so far. Not sure about how to stop this... The 12" range weapon is simply stronger, but it means not hanging back as much. Still... They distract the enemy really well. Took 'til end of turn 4 for my opponent to finish them off.
tneva82 wrote: Neither immortal nor warrior have -1 to wound though.
Which stops unit i have that would wipe 10 immortals and 20 warriors, fully buffed, with overkill, from killing lychguard in one go. Then they res back.
It's not just shield that matters. And it all adds up to point very few single unit can wipe off in one go. And if you don't wipe in one go rp kicks in.
Yer right, I wasn't taking that into account. Immortals and Lychguard, same toughness, get hit by bolter fire and one gets wounded on 5+ and the other on 6+ - that adds up over the course of a game.
Hecate wrote: Definitely want 10 Lychguard now. Played a game today, and yet again my Warrior blob wasn't hugely effective, simply because of getting charged early on. They were okay, but not great.
But a Lychguard blob would be fine getting charged. They'd probably survive, then could do actual damage back.
My Warriors have wound up in early melees in pretty much every game of 10th so far. Not sure about how to stop this... The 12" range weapon is simply stronger, but it means not hanging back as much. Still... They distract the enemy really well. Took 'til end of turn 4 for my opponent to finish them off.
Hungry Void is a great stratagem to throw on a group of 20 warriors but unfortunately we're often so strapped for CP. An Orb Lord is a cheap way to keep Warriors alive but then you lose the once-per-round free Stratagem, but if you throw an Overlord in you're probably using the free stratagem on Undying Legions.
Oh, the Warriors usually survive for a long time. That's not the issue. The issue is that they're rubbish in melee, and thus get charged early on and do very limited damage.
If they were fast enough to get on the centre objective in turn 1, it'd be fine. They could just sit there and generate VP for most of the game. But they're not really fast enough for that. And I'm hesitant to sit them on the home objective, where the stronger weapon will be out of range most of the time.
They're just sort of an in-between unit... Still decent, but not as good as I want them to be.
If we had a "fall back and shoot" stratagem, that'd be a great use of the Overlord's free strat. Alas...
If you dont have a particular reason for an Overlord in warriors you could use a Warden.
Can still attach crypteks with a warden around
Warden makes the guns heavy and assault. The heavy is a bit redundant unless youre hitting at -1 to hit targets but the assault means they can advance at least and still shoot. Theres also Chronomancers which let them move another 5" after they shoot (cant charge or move out of combat of course)
Doesnt solve not having a fall back and shoot but you can make a warrior blob surprisingly fast at least, and the Chrono's -1 to hit rule is "attack" so it also helps in melee
I was using an Overlord for the free strat, but admittedly I was using the Assault one so I could advance and shoot. Still didn't really help... Might try a different character next time.
Chronomancer could be good with Overlord OR Warden with the Assault thing. Might get me onto a no-man's-land objective in turn 1, which is mostly what I want. A turn of shooting, then objective capping.
Still think Lychguard are the better choice, though.
The way I use Warriors is I pretend they have 0 shots in shooting and 0 attacks in combat.
So list building, waste no resources on buffing their shooting or combat. Focus only on resilience and movement.
In game, waste no resouces on buffing their shooting or combat. Focus only on resilience and movement.
This is a little toungue in cheek but you get the idea.
So for weapon choice I go with the now allowed 10 of each, because it gives some flexibility for plinking a single wound off a tank or killing two grots, but doesn't fall into the trap (in my opinion) of expecting output with 20 of either choice.
Random idea with the Lychguard. If I run a Chronomancer with them, the Chrono has that "after shooting move 5" ", right. Would the Chrono's ranged weapon count? Obviously Lychguard aren't shooting anything, but the Chrono can.
This would mean an extra 5" movement, potentially getting them onto an objective. That's better than d6" for an advance, on average.
Obviously it'd be better to charge something, but if nothing's in range... Like, if I get first turn, Lychguard won't be charging anything. But if I can get within 18" for a ranged attack, then I can move further.
If I was desperate, I could even do the strat that lets me advance and shoot (Assault), which then gives me d6+5" extra movement on turn 1...
Just wondering if the Chrono's ranged attack is enough to trigger that ability itself. My instinct says yes.
You could use protocol of the sudden storm to get both an advance and the Chronomancer's bonus move. I think spending CP early on with things like this though might be a trap as you probably want to save a CP for resurrecting a character. Tesla Immortals would be a cheaper option for advance-shoot-move, or just use a unit of Tomb Blades or something else natively quick while Lycheguard catch up.
Hecate wrote: I guess it depends on how badly you want to tarpit the centre objective...
If the opponent gets the first turn, it'd be easier. Move, shoot, 5" from the Chrono, then charge 2d6" into whatever the enemy is running forward.
I just think Necrons really should place an immovable brick in a critical location, however possible.
Nope, no charging. That's what makes it an Advance replacement. There's a lot more utility for ranged units that can hop out of line of sight after shooting.
vict0988 wrote: 5" Move instead of Advancing 3,5. I'm not saying it's never the right move or that a Chronomancer isn't good in Lychguard, but it doesn't seem huge.
10” movement puts you on the center objective at 12” distance, whereas 8.5” is too short.
The bigger problem is that if you’re going first, nothing will be in range of the Chronomancer’s 18” range staff to shoot at to qualify for the 5”.
This is why Technomancer with cloak is better. He can toe into range and still maintain coherency and snag the No Man’s Land Objectives on T1.
Every battle report I've seen where the cron player doesn't drop significant points into RP support seems to result in a big loss.
One other thing I noticed is that anti-tank in our army is pretty limited. Those that didn't bring a minimum of two DDA were in trouble. Seems that the doom stalkers aren't tough enough to stay in the game long enough to get the job done. Significantly less punch than a DDA.
I'd be worried that the lokhust HD might suffer from the same shortcomings; not enough resilience.
I've been running 1 or 2 Doomstalkers and a Heavy Lokhust together, plus 1 game with a Triarch Stalker that I just bought.
The Doomstalkers I've found are better at anti-heavy-elites (like Terminators) rather than anti-tank. A flat 3 Damage can knock out a bunch of things.
The Heavy Lokhust... I tried the anti-infantry gun once, and it was underwhelming. The anti-tank was actually good, though. 6 Damage is fantastic. It's only 1 shot, but it's worth the chance of failure in my opinion. Easy to kill, but if the enemy has more important targets to deal with... I'm probably buying a second Heavy Lokhust at some point. They're kind of like the relic Arrow in 9th, except not just 1 shot per battle if they don't get blasted. Cheap points, too.
The Triarch Stalker... It finished off a Predator pretty well. Melta 4 is great on the Heat Ray. It's an anti-tank that loves to run up. It was able to grab an objective, which won the game for me, while blasting that Predator and tying up some Marines for a couple turns.
I've also bought a Void Dragon, so once it's assembled I'll see how good it is at anti-tank.
On the whole, I think:
Doomstalkers are best at hunting 3 Wound units, not tanks.
Heavy Lokhusts are fantastic.
Triarch Stalkers are a good choice.
Hecate wrote: Doomstalkers are best at hunting 3 Wound units, not tanks.
Heavy Lokhusts are fantastic.
This is spot on. Heavy Gauss Lokhusts are probably the most cost efficient AT gun Necrons have. Doomstalkers are like plasma guns - anti heavy infantry that can shoot at vehicles if they really have to. Doomsday arks are always popular as they are ok against anything, but the same points spent on Lokhust heavies will do substantially more damage to vehicles.
I also found it interesting that both the Doomstalker and the Triarch Stalker are 125 points each. I definitely think 1 of each is better than 2 of 1. I doubt I'll be running 2 Doomstalkers again now that my Triarch is assembled. Being able to fill different roles is super useful.
Welp as per the Balance Update we can no longer proc Undying Legions for 0 CP. Fun while it lasted!
EDIT: There are only two Battle Tactic Stratagems, Hungry Void (which in fairness has always been pretty tempting to proc on Lychguard or a blob of 20 Warriors) and Conquering Tyrant (I'm all-in on Gauss Weapons so re-rolling wounds isn't usually something I want to have to think about). If you want to get the most mileage out of your Overlords then I suppose it's encouraging a more aggressive play-style.
Still across the board we got a lot of point drops which is nice - Lychguard, Hexmark, Doomsday Ark, and Cryptothralls all went up about 20 pts (more for the DA) but we saw across the board drops for Destroyers, and 10 Warriors is now much cheaper than 10 Immortals. Overall good for my Silver Tide army (Undying Legions nerf excepted).
Weird update on the balance dataslate. Everything taken in touney lists went up a little, and a few points drops on the side - I think the overall picture is nothing changes much at all, as you could just make substitutions on your cheap action units to keep the mainstays of the pre-dataslate intact.
With the "free strats" nerf, I'm not convinced it makes a huge difference. If you were previously using a battle tactic (paid) and undying legions (free), they just swap places for the same overall CP cost - you are only worse off if you don't use the battle tactics.
The free strat nerf prevents us using undying legions twice in a phase, though - though the opponent could always time their attacks to prevent that anyways
I've been running mostly Scythe guard so the Hungry Void isn't as tempting for me - Going from S8 AP-3 to S9 AP-4 isn't as good as the jump from S6 AP-2 to S7 AP-3. S6-->7 means T12 is now threatened on 5s, which can be useful when Knights exist, whereas S8-->9 really only changes things for T8-9, which is a weird niche. The extra AP is always nice, but when my scythes are looking for Devastating Wounds anyways?
Similarly, the reroll wound rolls in shooting isn't very useful to 0CP. All of our shooting that an Overlord can join is either Lethal Hits (warriors), or already has reroll wounds (Immortals). The stuff that the reroll wound rolls in shooting strat is actually useful on can't be led by an Overlord. Soooooo... Overlords are basically just an extra beatstick which gives a once-per-round free Command Re-Roll.
Reroll to wound is pretty good even if you have lethal hits. Warriors do more wounds with reroll wound hits than with lethal hits as long as opponent T is 7 or less
Ugh... There goes a big reason to take Overlords. Having only 2 of the 6 strats available blows. I found the 0 CP thing was best as a reaction to the situation. Having all 6 available was a big draw.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Yeah, sure, Overlords are still okay... But now I'm questioning whether they're worth the points.
Automatically Appended Next Post: A basic Lord might make more sense. +1" movement helps a lot, and they can still take the Res Orb. 20 points cheaper... Might be the better choice.
Points...
Cheaper Warriors, cheaper Skorpekhs, yay. More expensive Doomstalkers and Reanimators, boo.
Doomstalker going up annoys me, it was doing good work but it wasnt anything ridiculous by any means. Only times it felt like it was punching oddly hard was when the dice gods favored me and i kept getting 7 attacks and hitting 6-7 of them.
Aside from games where that happened they RARELY earned their points back in offense. Usually more useful as a distraction carnifex, as people seem to really hate them and keep firing big guns at it (the amount of lasdestroyers thats plinked off my 4++ amuses me greatly...)
Vineheart01 wrote: Doomstalker going up annoys me, it was doing good work but it wasnt anything ridiculous by any means. Only times it felt like it was punching oddly hard was when the dice gods favored me and i kept getting 7 attacks and hitting 6-7 of them.
Aside from games where that happened they RARELY earned their points back in offense. Usually more useful as a distraction carnifex, as people seem to really hate them and keep firing big guns at it (the amount of lasdestroyers thats plinked off my 4++ amuses me greatly...)
That's probably partly why the points increased. Killing enemy units isn't the only way to earn points back.
Getting Warriors onto a centre objective in turn 1 requires movement. Advance is d6", whereas a Chronomancer gives you a flat 5" if you've shot. Someone mentioned how you can't guarantee having a target in range on turn 1. But what about the Overlord's Tachyon Arrow? It's a ranged attack with 72" range. Surely that counts? So all you'd need is line of sight to *something*.
I'm gonna try it in my next game. I need to get the Warriors on an objective. Every game I've played with them so far, they've been charged before gumming up an objective. This might be a solution.
Only issue is the Overlord can't have a Tachyon Arrow AND a Res Orb... That could be a problem. But what good is a Res Orb on a weak damage unit if you're not on an objective?
Hmm...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Or else take the advice of treating Warriors as if they don't need to do damage. Give them the 24" Flayers purely to get a shot for the 5" move. Overlord keeps Res Orb.
5" base move, 24" range... Chances are you'll get at least A target against most opponents. Unless they hide everything... In my experience, there's rarely enough terrain to hide *everything*. Even if you're shooting a titan and do no damage, at least you've shot.
I might try that first. The Reapers are better guns, but if you get charged anyway, they're useless.
Getting Warriors onto a centre objective in turn 1 requires movement. Advance is d6", whereas a Chronomancer gives you a flat 5" if you've shot. Someone mentioned how you can't guarantee having a target in range on turn 1. But what about the Overlord's Tachyon Arrow? It's a ranged attack with 72" range. Surely that counts? So all you'd need is line of sight to *something*.
I'm gonna try it in my next game. I need to get the Warriors on an objective. Every game I've played with them so far, they've been charged before gumming up an objective. This might be a solution.
Only issue is the Overlord can't have a Tachyon Arrow AND a Res Orb... That could be a problem. But what good is a Res Orb on a weak damage unit if you're not on an objective?
Hmm...
Automatically Appended Next Post: Or else take the advice of treating Warriors as if they don't need to do damage. Give them the 24" Flayers purely to get a shot for the 5" move. Overlord keeps Res Orb.
5" base move, 24" range... Chances are you'll get at least A target against most opponents. Unless they hide everything... In my experience, there's rarely enough terrain to hide *everything*. Even if you're shooting a titan and do no damage, at least you've shot.
I might try that first. The Reapers are better guns, but if you get charged anyway, they're useless.
The tachyon shot would work fine. As for moving Warriors as fast as possible with 24" range guns, I think the fastest options are:
1. Take a Royal Warden (has 24" gun) instead of an Overlord, now you can advance/shoot/move
2. If you want a res orb, take a mixed squad (19 reapers, 1 flayer for the 24" gun), then spend a CP on protocol of the sudden swarm, now you can (rerollable) advance/shoot/move
3. Just use the veil of darkness and be roughly where you want to be after your opponents first turn (Chronomancer ability would still work I think so you could slightly overcome the >9" placement)
Might try #2 if it looks like I need the strat help. I do still want to have the Res Orb.
My list for my next game, I'll have the Warrior blob for this ploy, but also have 10 Immortals with a Royal Warden. The Immortals will hang back in turn 1, looking inconspicuous, then use the Warden's assault ability to plug any holes as needed. May act as backup for the Warriors to some extent, depending on how much my opponent focuses on them. Or else the Immortals can plop down on a different objective.
A Reanimator between them, but that'll probably die quickly.
After all the planning, I didn't need anything other than the Chronomancer and Warriors. I was able to get a shot, and swarmed an objective all game. Opponent didn't even wind up targeting the Warriors, as there were too many other targets.
First time using the Void Dragon, too. Probably won me the game with ease. Decimated a squad of Assault Intercessors, a Redemptor Dreadnought, and a couple of minor characters before dying to sheer number of dice being rolled on 1-damage shots. Also finished off a Land Raider on 1 wound, with the special ability that leaches life.
Was using Wraiths for the first time, too, but the squad was wiped before even getting to roll a single attack. Next time, I guess.
Tried a max squad of Immortals for the first time. I think I'll stick with Warriors for now. Just not enough wounds. Wiped in the same turn as the Wraiths, but they did at least do a little damage, and blocked a passageway for a turn...
Wound up winning by a mile after the Void Dragon crushed everything it touched.
Got in my first game of 10th with my 'crons tonight. Ran...
Technomancer with hypermatter ablation
Royal Warden with the veil
2x20 warriors
1x5 immortals
2x3 wraiths
6 scarabs
3 scarabs
My opponent ran a crusher stampede featuring...
Neurotyrant
10 spinefist gaunts
10 hormagaunts
Deathleaper
Tryannofex with the acid spray
Tyrannofex with a rupture cannon
The new little monster from the Leviathan box
Van Ryan's lictors.
The scarabs zipped forward to score secondaries (deploying teleport beacons) and be distracting.
The warrior blobs killed the lictor squad and hormagaunts and then spent the rest of the game locked in combat with the acid 'fex and the new monster (psychophage?), eventually killing the latter. It wasn't flashy, but honestly they probably won me the game by standing on an objective while they steadily reanimated to keep the enemy locked up.
A mix of poor and amazing rolls saw the immortals and wraiths just barely survive and then finish off death leaper. The immortals probably won the game when shot the neuro tyrant to death on my opponent's turn. I was surprised by how underwhelming their gauss weapons looked on paper, but the unit was cheap and did just enough damage to swing the game, so... Good job immortals.
The wraiths not being able to move through ruin walls was kind of brutal. There were multiple times that their nerfed movement and inability to go through ruins caused me to camp objectives with them instead of playing more aggressively. Still, they did manage to finish off death leaper and rescue my immortals, plus my opponent didn't really have a weapon profile well-suited to dealing with them, so they were uniquely good at scoring on the empty flank.
My characters' abilities didn't get a chance to do much except the FNP from the technomancer. Am I correct in thinking that the Royal Warden's ability to make weapons Heavy basically does nothing at the moment because he already provides +1 to hit by virtue of the detachment rules?
Overall, I managed to eck out a victory by like, 5VP. Very close and fun game. Honestly, might be my favorite game of 10th so far, despite the tedium of spending most of the game with 40 warriors locked in combat with MCs.
Wyldhunt wrote: My characters' abilities didn't get a chance to do much except the FNP from the technomancer. Am I correct in thinking that the Royal Warden's ability to make weapons Heavy basically does nothing at the moment because he already provides +1 to hit by virtue of the detachment rules?
It can cancel a hit penalty, but generally speaking two sources of +1 are redundant.
Also soon there's more detachments so ability plays more. Tyranid had similar thing with character that provided sustained which most armies had via detachment. Now with 5 det's that don't provide sustained that character got new life
I'm really curious what the new Necron rules will bring when they come out. I mean, +1 to hit with a Leader is great, but I'm hoping for a special rule that lends itself more to tactical planning... Figuring out tactics is my favourite part of the entire game, so I really hope the Necrons detachment rules are different enough, and interesting enough, that it'll improve the game for me that way.
It seems like whatever detachments we get will need to be pretty potent. +1 to hit when characters are attached is huge. Switching back to only hitting half the time with my warriors is going to feel rough.
New codex reviews are out in the wild. I'll update the 1st post shortly switching over from index to codex.
For anyone who hasn't seen yet, a quick rundown of changes:
Deleted datasheets - Anrakyr, Obyron, Zandrekh, Lord
New datasheets - only the Translocation Shroud Overlord. He's exactly the same as a normal overlord but is locked to blade and orb, and swaps the damage reduction rule with the shroud
Significant datasheet changes
- Lychguard cannot take crypteks as leaders (RIP Lychguard bricks)
- Cryptothralls lose FNP, but gain a wound (effectively about the same when in a Technomancer unit)
- Warriors lose better reanimation, gain reanimation rerolls, also gaus reaper -1 strength
- Technomancer is now only the cloak version, loses lone op, gains the ability to lead Wraiths (!)
- C'tan all get -1 move to 6" (boo, slowest fly units in the game), all gain a native 5+ FNP (!)
- Transcendent can no longer take enhancements (but has FNP natively so kind of better anyway)
- Hexmark doesn't get infinite return shooting anymore
- Psychomancer still one of the worst characters, but not by as much (debuffs actually work now)
Significant rules changes
- All forms of reanimation boosts have been nerfed or sidegraded
- Orbs are one shot but D6 (so probably best on warriors for the reroll?)
- Reanimator still does the same, but aura cut down to 3"
New detachments
- A few tweaks (mainly nerfs) to Awakened Dynasty, still looks solid though
- Canoptek Court looks mental. Easy hit rerolls almost army wide, solid enhancements (including the ever more common infiltrate a unit) and strats
- Hypercrypt Legion also looks pretty good. Overcomes a lot of movement issues we have, and a good selection of damage buffs
- The other two (Obeisance Phalanx and Annihilation Legion) look to be the weakest, Annihilation easily the worst though
Hot takes
- Void Dragon is potentially the strongest C'tan now due to them all having FNP, but dragon has better regeneration
- C'tan in general seem very usable, either spammed in Hypercrypt Legion or individually out of strategic reserves (rapid ingress) for other detachments
- Tesla Immortals with Plasmancer seem solid in any detachment that can give hit rerolls
- Wraiths will be a common sight, particularly infiltrating in a Canoptek Court
- With so many reanimation nerfs, will probably see a shift to damage dealing armies instead of durable scoring armies in tournaments
- Orbs are weaker, not a huge number of battle tactic strats - Imotekh giving +1CP is a lot more tempting now
Do you think the classic 5th edition army build around 2 unkillable monolits can work in Hypercrypt Legion? I suppose 3 monoliths take up to much of the points cost.
That detachment fixes the movement problem and the invunerable save problem. You also get teix, like charging from reserves.
Niiai wrote:Do you think the classic 5th edition army build around 2 unkillable monolits can work in Hypercrypt Legion? I suppose 3 monoliths take up to much of the points cost.
In a few weeks we'll see the real points costs so will have a better idea then. 1-2 Monoliths could work, especially for teleporting around and dropping off units without using the charging strat.
H.B.M.C. wrote:This whole Codex feels like a typical GW knee-jerk overcorrection.
Yeah a bit. So many nerfs to reanimation and straight up deleting any desire to run Lychguard compared to any other melee unit is rough. There are some strong things in here though so more of a substitution of which things will prop up the faction than an overall overcorrection.
You shall be forever remembered as the only non-Destroyer Necron HQ that doesn't look like the bastard offspring of the Crimson Chin and a bead curtain.
Deleted datasheets - Anrakyr, Obyron, Zandrekh, Lord
Oof. Dark eldar sympathize. Those were some of my favorite named 'crons. :(
New datasheets - only the Translocation Shroud Overlord. He's exactly the same as a normal overlord but is locked to blade and orb, and swaps the damage reduction rule with the shroud
Is the translocation shroud basically a veil of darkness? If so, kind of excited for a dedicated teleporter character as the tele-tech is one of my favorite necron gimmicks. A mobility-over-durability option is neat. Not a fan of the limited armory though, given that it's probably the result of simply not selling the model with extra weapon bits.
Significant datasheet changes
- Lychguard cannot take crypteks as leaders (RIP Lychguard bricks)
Aww. But there's that whole short story in the tyranid omnibus about the cryptek surviving her world's destruction alongside her lych guard besty. :( Fluff-wise, it always made sense to me that members of the court would warrant their own dedicated bodyguards (slash spies).
- Warriors lose better reanimation, gain reanimation rerolls, also gaus reaper -1 strength
- Technomancer is now only the cloak version, loses lone op, gains the ability to lead Wraiths (!)
Hmm. Might be fine. I play silver tide and was pretty happy with how it was performing before. Am okay with less durable warrior squads so long as they're still durable enough to behave the way I need them to.
What does this mean for my technomancer who's modeled without the cloak? Can I reasonably call him a chronomancer if I still want him to support my warrior blobs? Losing LO and letting him join wraiths makes sense. That was clearly the intended use case before anyway.
- C'tan all get -1 move to 6" (boo, slowest fly units in the game), all gain a native 5+ FNP (!)
Gives me flashbacks to when the talos was a skimmer that could only move 6". Ah well. At least we're still faster than spore mines?
- Hexmark doesn't get infinite return shooting anymore
So they're just mediocre snipers that you can deepstrike but probably shouldn't?
- Hypercrypt Legion also looks pretty good. Overcomes a lot of movement issues we have, and a good selection of damage buffs
This is encouraging. See above about enjoying teleportation shenanigans.
Question: Does silver tide still look viable in general? If we're less durable/good at scoring and need to retool towards offense, I'm wondering if BS4+ makes warriors too unreliable to be worthwhile. Previously, their offense with an attached character still made them just okay offensively. It was the defense that made them perform well.
I don't disagree, but don't the removed units all have models?
Pretty sure the Lord was a resin model. All the old special characters definitely were. The distinction between Overlord and Lord was always a bit weird to me anyway and I really don't see why the same model couldn't have been used for both. I'd have rather had a new plastic Lord model than the weird translocation Overlord that nobody asked for.
Lords are the metal (later FineCost) models that we've had since 3rd.
So a few of us have gone from having 3 Overlords and 3 Lords to have 3 Overlords and 3 unusable extra Overlords because we can only field 3 of any non-BL/transport unit type.
Adding a slightly different Overlord that just has a piece of Wargear doesn't make up for that. That teleporting Overlord shouldn't be a separate choice, in the same way that the Gravis Captain w/Heavy Bolt Rifle being a separate choice was stupid in 9th, and how Phobos Lieutenant w/Combi-Weapon as a separate unit choice is stupid now. Especially as he's locked with his equipment.
Some of us also have Technomancers who aren't riding Scarab Surfboards.
Time to start theory crafting the new combo's then.
Getting the easy one out of the way first - new Overlord doesn't do anything other than make one unit advance better. The only unit he leads with assault weapons are tesla Immortals so that's a thing I guess.
CP manipulation options have increased from 1 to 3, Imotekh is still the best option but there is also:
Spoiler:
- Canoptek Court autodivinator enhancement. Depends on your opponent being able to CP farm so is a bit too situational
- Obeisance Phalanx honourable combatant enhancement. A bit better than the other enhancement, can force your opponent to lose a CP if you kill a character unit with your Overlord's unit (probably tesla Immortals again)
The Awakened Dynasty is largely the same as before (except Lychguard suck), main new option I can see is Wraith centric:
Spoiler:
- Wraiths led by a Technomancer
- Give the Technomancer the nether realm casket (new weaker version of hypermaterial ablator, stealth unit)
- Take a CCB with anaegic dermal bond (new identical version of sempiternal weave, 4+ FNP)
- Wraith's are buffed with +1 to hit, stealth, 5+ FNP - Technomancer is an infantry keyword option, so CCB can now res orb the Wraiths (and is about fast enough/tough enough to keep up)
Canoptek Court has a couple of options:
Spoiler:
- Stick dimensional sanctum on your best melee unit (Skorpekhs or Wraiths), infiltrate, profit
- Overlord, Plasmancer & Tesla Immortals combo
- Overlord gives free use of 2cp battle tactic strat cynosure if eradication
- You have reroll hits from detachment, 5+ critical hits from plasmancer - fish for sustained hits
- You have reroll wounds from Immortals, devastating wounds from stratagem - go fish again
Hypercrypt Legion can do some interesting things:
Spoiler:
- Osteoclave fulcrum enhancement gives deepstrike
- This is already good enough on anything, particularly for rapid ingress on a melee unit (Skorpekhs, Wraiths, Scythguard I guess)
- Cryptothralls can join any unit led by a Cryptek
- Wraiths wouldn't normally want this as Crypto-buckets are slow
- Rapid Ingress, easy charge, T6 ablative wounds, profit
- The Reanimator aura being small hurts, but you could keep one near a monolith
- Recall units via detachment rule/eternity gate to sit in the aura until healed
- Dimensional overseer enhancement gives you more teleportation so you should have enough moves to swap units around as needed
- Detachment rule does not demand you redeploy immediately
- Retain a melee unit in reserves instead of redeploying in your turn
- Rinse and repeat rapid ingress deployments for easy charges, profit
Shout out if you think of anything else. Once there is a definitive list of effective options I'll likely stick them in the OP for easy reference.
New MFM points available at Warhammer Community now.
No major surprises, nerfed units have received points cuts and nothing you would expect to see in a tournament list has gone up in cost. Praetorians still weirdly expensive and the new Overlord costs no extra despite having more abilities (something something wargear is free).
tneva82 wrote: That would assume they were actually playtesting index about year ago enough to realize it needs correction.
No it doesn't. Not even slightly. Mostly because "knee-jerk" generally means a snap decision, made quickly, without any real forethought or prior analysis beyond surface-level inputs. If, as you posit, they were playtesting the index "about a year ago", then it, by definition, wouldn't be knee-jerk.
tneva82 wrote: That would assume they were actually playtesting index about year ago enough to realize it needs correction.
No it doesn't. Not even slightly. Mostly because "knee-jerk" generally means a snap decision, made quickly, without any real forethought or prior analysis beyond surface-level inputs. If, as you posit, they were playtesting the index "about a year ago", then it, by definition, wouldn't be knee-jerk.
Except codex was long done.
After 10th ed codex there was 0 time to input knee jerks from games to codex as codex was done and ready to go...
Unless you think GW has figured time machine and actually went past and changed the book in the past...
Any kneejerk reaction would have to be on their internal playtesting because they never had time to kneejerk based on players playing because codex was done and ready by the time players got their hands on index.
Unless you assume GW has time machine ;D
At which point...why on earth GW would waste their time selling plastic toy soldiers? With actual functioning time machine they could become richer beyond their wildest dreams. Warhammer models would pale in comparison to profit they could do with TIME MACHINE that allows to change the past...
So, does 6 Canoptk Wraith with attached Technomancer (+5 Feel no Pain + healing D3 wounds) looks preety good in Canoptek Court?
Wondering if they are rather anvil unit needing Skorpek Destroyers with Skorpekh Lord as a "hammer" or if to go all-in with "canoptek" units only for detachment bonus.
I'd say that 6 Wraiths with a Technomancer is good in any Detachment. +5 FnP, d3 Healing in movement, and Reanimation will make it a difficult to shift unit that can also be fast at 10". As for the Canoptek Court the fact you can give Warriors and Immortals conditional re-roll hits is nice but would +1 to hit for having a Leader be better?
Is the Warden worth taking now that they changed his ability from granting Assault and Heavy to Fall Back and shoot/charge?
Side note. In the app it still lists Lychguard for the Technomaner instead of Wraiths
Xyxel wrote:So, does 6 Canoptk Wraith with attached Technomancer (+5 Feel no Pain + healing D3 wounds) looks preety good in Canoptek Court?
Wondering if they are rather anvil unit needing Skorpek Destroyers with Skorpekh Lord as a "hammer" or if to go all-in with "canoptek" units only for detachment bonus.
6 Skorpekh's and a Lord do more damage than 6 Wraiths and a Techno in any detachment (including shooting, fighting and Wraith Form bonus damage), Wraiths are hot because they are the new super tanky unit, and fast by Necron standards. Wraiths will see play in any detachment, either as a fast tanky unit, or as a replacement for the now dead Lychguard brick (Technomancer allows Cryptothralls to join, in an Awakened Dynasty you could also add the stealth enhancement etc to turn them into a slow super tank).
BomBomHotdog wrote:I'd say that 6 Wraiths with a Technomancer is good in any Detachment. +5 FnP, d3 Healing in movement, and Reanimation will make it a difficult to shift unit that can also be fast at 10". As for the Canoptek Court the fact you can give Warriors and Immortals conditional re-roll hits is nice but would +1 to hit for having a Leader be better?
Is the Warden worth taking now that they changed his ability from granting Assault and Heavy to Fall Back and shoot/charge?
Side note. In the app it still lists Lychguard for the Technomaner instead of Wraiths
Rerolls vs +1 to hit seem pretty interchangeable really, but I think the Court has better damage builds from enhancements and stratagems though (tesla Immortals and infiltrating Wraiths seem the obvious choices).
The Warden is a bit weird, at 40 points for a good gun and a leader ability I think he's fine, but fall back and shoot is only really going to be high value on a big warrior block.
I like the Warden much better now. No more overlap with the Awakened Dynasty benefits. Being able to keep my warrior blobs agile/shooting was the reason I bought him in 9th. He'll be useful for my Hypercrypt silver tide where the plan is to plop down next to the enemy, fire 40+ shots, and then most likely get immediately tarpitted.
6 wraiths with a technomancer seems like a decent hammer unit. Not really a "deathstar," but beefy enough to take a hit and take most enemies head-on.
A weirder, probably too-expensive option I'm wondering about is a suicide cryptek with the infiltrator enhancement. Basically, charge him in head-first on turn 1 and then pop the Curse stratagem so that you receive the benefits of the curse all game long.
Hyperphase crypt looks like a lot of fun and fits the fluff I've been wawnting to go for since starting 'crons. Going overboard on the gimmick risks giving up control of the board's center, but judicious use of it means that opponents have to stress about screening and constantly worry that we're going to drop a silver tide on their flank.
I'm thinking the secret sauce is to send our chunky elite units, maybe C'tan, and maybe a warrior blob up the middle of the table. Our opponents won't want to run headfirst into that, BUT staying too close to the flanks makes it easy to drop piles of warrior/immortal shots on them when we come in from reserves.The obvious counterplay for the reserve blobs is to charge them, but then that means that the enemy is close enough for our melee units to reach them.
And then we can leave any injured units in the backfield or heal them in reserves via the strat to limit our opponents' ability to whittle such units down.
Having a monolith running up the center seems like a natural fit for the HYpercrypt (gives us a way to bring squads in mid-field if nothing else), but what do you guys think? That nearly $200 price tag is a real deterrant, and I"m tempted to just poorhammer up my own cardboard/sprue/paper monolith.
Fun little combo I found using Hypercrypt. If you take the Overlord with Translocation Shroud and give him the Hyperspatial Transfer Node you get +12 to your Advance. With the added benefit of being able to move through terrain and models thanks to the Overlord.
Both give +6 to Movement instead of rolling an Advance. Both are modifiers and do not set a Characteristic to a set number so they can stack.
I don't think thats how that works. Both are modifiers that are used instead of rolling a dice that is true but when you use one you can't use the other because your not rolling a dice since your using the first ability to replace rolling a dice.
Finally got my book, started flipping through datasheets before dinner.
Started with the overlord. Had a bit of a 'Oh, GW' moment when I realized the wargear change (from the index cards) hit NMNR territory.
The overlord can't have an overlord's blade and rez orb. Because... reasons.
The model comes with tachyon arrow and overlord's blade. It can swap BOTH for either staff of light or voidscythe. The end.
If it doesn't have a tachyon arrow, it can have a rez orb. So that can only be paired with staff or scythe.
Now both the translocation overlord and command barge can have orb and blade without any issues, but... not the standard foot guy.
At this point I'm wondering how the staff of light option survived...
Voss wrote: Finally got my book, started flipping through datasheets before dinner.
Started with the overlord. Had a bit of a 'Oh, GW' moment when I realized the wargear change (from the index cards) hit NMNR territory.
The overlord can't have an overlord's blade and rez orb. Because... reasons.
The model comes with tachyon arrow and overlord's blade. It can swap BOTH for either staff of light or voidscythe. The end.
If it doesn't have a tachyon arrow, it can have a rez orb. So that can only be paired with staff or scythe.
Now both the translocation overlord and command barge can have orb and blade without any issues, but... not the standard foot guy.
At this point I'm wondering how the staff of light option survived...
NMNR is going off the rails a bit these days, a fair few of the discontinued characters are still available, but stuff that has quietly been dropped from the webstore like the Lokhust Lord and old Overlord model (the only scythe and orb model) are still present. I guess the stack of arbitrary restrictions is building up and starting to become unmanageable.
Codex FAQ is up. Canoptek Court devastating wounds stratagem has been nerfed very hard - still costs 2cp but now only affects specifically Cryptek/Canoptek models and not the entire unit (so basically worthless on anything other than wraiths). Other stuff in the FAQ is just clarifications.
HYPERPHASE CRYPT (1,000 points)
Warden with dimensional overseer (joined a warrior squad)
Technomancer (joined a warrior squad)
1 squad of 5 gauss immortals
2 squads of 20 warriors with flayers
1 squad of 5 death marks
2 squads of 3 wraiths with a mix of weapons
1 canptek doomstalker (first time trying him out!)
My opponent ran an extremely elite Leagues of Votan list. Something like:
1 Chonky hammer character who does mortals on the charge and imposes -1 on to-wound rolls against high strength weapons.
2 squads of the guys with 2+ saves.
2 of their big, chonky transports. (Not the sagitarius things)
1 squad of 3 bikes
I was even rustier than I thought and messed up before the game even began by selecting behind enemy lines and deploy teleport homers. The theory was that he'd struggle to advance and defend his rear, but I misremembered the teleport homers objective. (I thought they could be deployed anywhere in no man's land.) Also, the mission rule was Delayed Reserves, so that was rough for my first time out with the Hyperphase Crypt!
Not much happened turn one. He advanced and had no targets. I dumbly moved a squad of wraiths and the immortals out into the open mistakenly thinking they could drop some beacons. The doomstalker took a few wounds off a transport. The technomancer's warrior squad poked their heads out to fish for lethal hits against the transport and threaten to contest an objective.
On his second turn, he wiped out a wraith squad effortlessly. Turns out D4 weapons are pretty rough on W4 wraiths. The rest of his army poured everything they had into the technomancer warriors and just barely managed to finish them off.
I stuck the immortals and my warden's warriors into reserves planning to pop out and do some return damage. Unfortunately, Delayed Reserves kept my warrior blob out of the fight. Deathmarks spent half the game babysitting an objective in my deployment zone. The doomstalker landed 6 hits on his infantry... that then turned into 2 wounds as i rolled four 2s (which failed due to his character). 2 dead bodies. The immortals chipped in. killing maybe 1 more dude. The remaining wraiths charged the infantry and did nothing.
On his turn, he thinned the immortals and killed the wraiths. We spent the next turn trading shots. He thinned out the remaining warriors and finished the immortals. I finished off one of his infantry squads but not the character.
I brought my deathmarks in on his home objective, shot my entire remaining army at his character (who no longer had a squad) and brought him down to a single wound. The rest of the game was kind of a slap fight. I "killed" his character who then stood back up with 1 wound remaining. He killed off all my remaining units except the deathmarks who spent their time throwing down another beacon.
TAKE-AWAYS:
* I definitely messed up piloting the army. I definitely should have chosen better secondary objectives given my lack of action monkeys in this list. Guess it pays to take the time to re-read the objectives.
* Doomstalker seems really solid. Reasonably durable. Reasonably hard-hitting (even if this particular enemy was a tough matchup for it). I'm thinking of grabbing a second given that my army doesn't have much reach.
* Gauss flayers just do not cut it against hard targets. My warriors all have flayers instead of reapers, but I should probably ask my opponents if I can run them as reapers in the future. The extra pip of AP might make a big difference. That said, they *still* wouldn't be very good at taking out T6+ Sv2+ targets. I need to find more tools with decent AP.
* Warriors feel a little iffy. A squad with a technomancer (for 5+ FNP) took a beating before dying, but it still died in a single turn. And only getting back d3 warriors in the command phase means that they can't bounce back the way they used to. Hitting on 4s instead of 3s definitely cost me a lot of hits too. So they're not very killy, they're not really flexible in their target selection, they're not durable enough to avoid being wiped out even with a technomancer, and they don't recover enough of their losses to make much difference when the squad does stick around.
If I keep running the Hyperphase Crypt, maybe I'll be better off running mostly 10-man squads so I can spread out more and focus on objectives.
* Without a monlith in the mix, half the Hyperphase stratagems aren't available. The other half are good in theory, but I never had a turn where I had a wounded unit in reserves to heal, and the only time I needed to plop a squad somewhere away from the board edge I used the Deathmarks who deepstrike anyway.
I was really excited about the Hyperphase Crypt for fluff reasons, and I really like the agility it gives my slow infantry squads, but I'm not sure if I can justify it with my current collection being mostly warriors.
* Deathmarks benefitted reasonably well form the 'crypt. It lets them hold objectives, then bounce around to better sniping positions later on. If I had multiple squads of them to drop beacons, I might have wracked upsome decent VP.
*Wraiths were surprisingly underwhelming. But I guess they're not really made to fight enemies with high T and 2+ saves.
Overall, I think I either need to lean away from the silver tide to get more offense, or else I need to look into one of our other detachments. This was a smaller game, but I think my lack of anti-tank would only become more of a problem at higher points.
Kind of bummed about warriors. They just don't feel tough enough to be worth supporting or lethal enough to be worth taking over a different unit. I should probably give them a few more trial runs against less durable opponents before cutting them though. Especially given that they make up the vast majority of my 'cron collection. :\
Insularum wrote: Codex FAQ is up. Canoptek Court devastating wounds stratagem has been nerfed very hard - still costs 2cp but now only affects specifically Cryptek/Canoptek models and not the entire unit (so basically worthless on anything other than wraiths). Other stuff in the FAQ is just clarifications.
Fun while it lasted; back to the index detachment (Awakened Dynasty) for me. =(
What detachments and tactics are people with warrior-heavy armies using? Does the Awakened Dynasty make them killy enough to pull their weight? As much as I like the idea of the hyperphase crypt, I don't want to spend every game bouncing off my opponents.
What detachments and tactics are people with warrior-heavy armies using? Does the Awakened Dynasty make them killy enough to pull their weight? As much as I like the idea of the hyperphase crypt, I don't want to spend every game bouncing off my opponents.
Awakened Dynasty is probably still the best detachment for Warriors if you're playing at 1,000 points like your last list, as all the other detachments need more specific units choices to get the buffs.
One of the best things you could do with Warriors is push them forward as fast as you can, but back them up with some of our efficient cheap guns (Heavy Destroyers, Doomstalkers) - the Warriors need dealing with but are there to distract from the guns that are doing the real heavy lifting. Something like this:
Jump forward with these:
Overlord (orb and veil of darkness)
Technomancer (nether realm casket)
20 Warriors (tank damage 2+ shots here)
2 Cryptothralls (tank damage 1 shots here)
Support with these:
3 Gauss destructor Heavy Destroyers
1 Doomstalker
The rest of the army could then be split between objective grabbers and maybe a melee unit.
Da-Rock wrote: Warriors are for clogging the field more than damage or survival.
Plasmancer for help with damage
Illuminor as an additional assistance for damage
Chronomancer for movement and defense
Yep, make them tough with any of the defensive buffs and throw them forward as fast as you can. Move blocking units need to be dealt with and this buys you time for your better units to do their thing.
So the no-nerf dataslate was a bit of a surprise. Going over the new rules commentary though, I think Necrons also have a hidden new mediocre ability that might be fun to try out in less serious games - aircraft that don't completely suck.
The Nightscythe can come in from turn 1 - with the new commentary it can also drop off passengers on the turn it arrives, making it a slightly worse drop pod (it is coming from strategic reserves not deep strike). It can also pick stuff up in the fight phase, either to pick up the unit that came out earlier, or to slingshot a unit like Skorpechs (climb in the back turn 1, jump out the front before moving the 'scythe in turn 2).
The Doomscythe also has some play - specifically in the Hypercrypt detachment. You can overcome most of the terrible aircraft movement rules by using the detachment redeploy ability on it whenever needed (Nightscythe can also use this move I guess if you are continually dropping/picking up the same unit).
Both flyers are still way overcosted - but having some tricks is better than letting them gather dust I guess?
Insularum wrote: So the no-nerf dataslate was a bit of a surprise. Going over the new rules commentary though, I think Necrons also have a hidden new mediocre ability that might be fun to try out in less serious games - aircraft that don't completely suck.
The Nightscythe can come in from turn 1 - with the new commentary it can also drop off passengers on the turn it arrives, making it a slightly worse drop pod (it is coming from strategic reserves not deep strike). It can also pick stuff up in the fight phase, either to pick up the unit that came out earlier, or to slingshot a unit like Skorpechs (climb in the back turn 1, jump out the front before moving the 'scythe in turn 2).
The Doomscythe also has some play - specifically in the Hypercrypt detachment. You can overcome most of the terrible aircraft movement rules by using the detachment redeploy ability on it whenever needed (Nightscythe can also use this move I guess if you are continually dropping/picking up the same unit).
Both flyers are still way overcosted - but having some tricks is better than letting them gather dust I guess?
So following up on this, I'm having trouble understanding the first turn arrival - the commentary says "Abilities that allow units to be set up in the Reinforcements step of your first, second or third Movement phase using the Strategic Reserves rules treat the current battle round number as being one higher than it actually is in the first battle round only, unless explicitly stated otherwise." (top of page 2). Then later the Rapid Ingress stratagem reads: "You cannot use this Stratagem to enable a unit to arrive on the battlefield during a battle round it would not normally be ble to do so in." (pg 20) So under what circumstances is a player allowed to bring in their reserves on Turn 1?
You do not need to use rapid ingress, the Nightscythe datasheet has two abilities - invasion beams for picking up a unit in the fight phase, and quantum invader which explicitly allows it to arrive in turn 1 like a drop pod (but as the Nightscythe cannot deep strike it would be following the rules commentary advice of coming in as is it were a turn later for strategic reserves).
Unlike the drop pod it did not have the ability to disembark units on arrival until the rules commentary changed that.
So, I'm a Dakka Dakka virgin and hopefully this message is in the right place. but I think I know the answer to this question but need some clarification.
Can i start a game with nothing on the board?
My mates bringing a dirty astra militarum armoured column with 3 bane blades and rogal dorn battle tanks so I figured I'd play just as dirty and I'm bringing 6 C'tan. 3 trancendant and 1 each of the others plus a doomsday ark, doomstalker and a chronomancer. Bang on 2000 points.
My point being- with putting the chronomancer and two doom shooters in strategic reserve, the 3 trancendant in deepstrike and the last 3 C'tan characters being put into strategic reserve using the Decievers "Grand Illusion ability" means i could have nothing on the board for the start of turn one. Is this legal or do i need a certain percentage of my force on the table at the start of turn one?
Thank you.
I have posted this question elsewhere in the hope i can get a reply before saturday 13th april
Overloard Ste wrote: So, I'm a Dakka Dakka virgin and hopefully this message is in the right place. but I think I know the answer to this question but need some clarification.
Can i start a game with nothing on the board?
My mates bringing a dirty astra militarum armoured column with 3 bane blades and rogal dorn battle tanks so I figured I'd play just as dirty and I'm bringing 6 C'tan. 3 trancendant and 1 each of the others plus a doomsday ark, doomstalker and a chronomancer. Bang on 2000 points.
My point being- with putting the chronomancer and two doom shooters in strategic reserve, the 3 trancendant in deepstrike and the last 3 C'tan characters being put into strategic reserve using the Decievers "Grand Illusion ability" means i could have nothing on the board for the start of turn one. Is this legal or do i need a certain percentage of my force on the table at the start of turn one?
Thank you.
I have posted this question elsewhere in the hope i can get a reply before saturday 13th april
So long as you go through the motions of deploying the 3 shards then declaring their redeployment at the appropriate time then yeah I guess.
Overloard Ste wrote: So, I'm a Dakka Dakka virgin and hopefully this message is in the right place. but I think I know the answer to this question but need some clarification.
Can i start a game with nothing on the board?
My mates bringing a dirty astra militarum armoured column with 3 bane blades and rogal dorn battle tanks so I figured I'd play just as dirty and I'm bringing 6 C'tan. 3 trancendant and 1 each of the others plus a doomsday ark, doomstalker and a chronomancer. Bang on 2000 points.
My point being- with putting the chronomancer and two doom shooters in strategic reserve, the 3 trancendant in deepstrike and the last 3 C'tan characters being put into strategic reserve using the Decievers "Grand Illusion ability" means i could have nothing on the board for the start of turn one. Is this legal or do i need a certain percentage of my force on the table at the start of turn one?
Thank you.
I have posted this question elsewhere in the hope i can get a reply before saturday 13th april
So this comes down to Reserves limits. You can have up to 50% (1000pts) of your total army in Reserves at the start of the game. Of that 50% up to 25% (500pts) can be put into Strategic Reserves. For your Strategic Reserves you're ok; Chronomancer, Doomsday Ark and Doomstalker are 385 total. You're 3 Transendents are 275 each, totaling 825 for them alone. You're overall points you want to put into Reserves is 1210.
You are over by 210 points.
Not too sure how good it would be against 3 baneblades. You are both bringing large models so board control is going to be a problem for you to bring in units from reserves. He wont have the coverage to keep you totally off the table but he can put you at a big disadvantage for scoring.
How much terrain are you using in your games? I like to take a Shadowsword from time to time and have a lot of trouble lining up a good shot. Maybe discussing with you opponent for a useful/edition specific battlefield layout is more effective than trying to counter cheese with more cheese.
Also, are you using the tactical or fixed objectives? I can't see how this superheavy list can compete in any way on secondaries (and primaries, depending on the mission).
Some thoughts on the new points; most of the nerfs seem sensible, and I don't think anything critical has been hurt so much that it changes the factions outlook too drastically.
Crypteks - I don't think the changes make any material difference. 3 out of the 4 generic Crypteks nerfed, but the premium options still feel worth it compared to the Psychomancer.
C'tan - You can still take as many as you want in a 2k list. 3 out of the 4 C'tan nerfed, the cheap Deceiver is looking good though (and the nerfed ones are still very good value).
Wraith spam - This isn't going away with the only nerf being to the Technomancer (a bit weird as he is starting to feel priced out of weaker units like Warriors). I think the discounts to both Skorpekhs and their Lord though might make people consider swapping out one unit of Wraiths for Destroyers - one thing I'll be trying out is having a maxed out Wraith unit for moving up the centre and Skorpekhs in reserve to safely arrive on a flank.
Immortal spam - Still better than Warriors. Some competitive lists were running lots of small units with Plasmancers for the on demand mortal wounds, despite the double nerf to the squad and character that still feels strong.
Other squads - Deathmarks and Flayed ones are now super cheap, and both have deployment shenanigans. Triarch Praetorians continue to be ignored and Cryptothralls are still paying for their part in the Index era power lists, both feel substantially overcosted. Still plenty of cheap units for utility and scoring options.
Detachments - Most of the nerfed units seem to be focused on Hypercrypt power lists, so it'll be interesting to see if Canoptek Court or Awakened Dynasty start to overtake Hypercrypt.
ing scarabs."
