tneva82 wrote:

IanVanCheese wrote:
The other issue we have is that our snipers are awful, so we can't even take out the characters that are giving the buffs.

You need pretty nasty snipers to get by stratagem that allows friendly guys absorb bullets though. Not many armies can do that. Not even vindicator will get him easily.

True, but you can just kill the dudes first. We've got dude killing guns for days. Intercessors drop to Tesla just like everybody else, you just might need two units of immortals to do it instead of one.

tneva82 wrote:
Non-ih primaris vehicles blow up just fine for destroyers. It's ih ones with -1 damage and 5++ that kills destroyers. 7.77 pre fnp is not great

Las fusil eliminators in dev doctrine destroy our destroyers btw. Pun intended Especially in a castle or as salies. -4 flat 3 damage makes short work of them.

But seriously, the impulser has a 4++ and the infantry are 2 wounds.

Averages might be damage 2 from guas canons but reality is your going to roll lots of 1's and 3's for damage and you don't end up killing their infantry very well, if they pop trans-human physiology you can expect to kill ~5 primaris in the open 4 in cover if you don't solar pulse.

Even none IH dreads have the silly half damage strat meaning most of your shots are 1 damage as well. It isn't just iron hands that they struggle against. you basically get one shot with that 300 point unit, then it dies. for that 50 point destroyer they get nearly 3 intersessors with stalker bolt rifles (51pts) Thats also 3 shots at -3 and flat damage 2 out to 36", sure it's strength 4 but a CM and lieutenant make them far more efficient then they have any right being for their cost. Thats a troop as well btw ha ha.

I love destroyers, it's literally my favorite unit in the necron army, but they don't do well verse primaris unfortunately. The book needs a rewrite, but that ain't happening any time soon so best we can hope for are additional point drops. Even that doesn't really fix things, just increases the scale of the game yet again while giving the appearance of help.


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IanVanCheese wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

IanVanCheese wrote:
The other issue we have is that our snipers are awful, so we can't even take out the characters that are giving the buffs.

You need pretty nasty snipers to get by stratagem that allows friendly guys absorb bullets though. Not many armies can do that. Not even vindicator will get him easily.

True, but you can just kill the dudes first. We've got dude killing guns for days. Intercessors drop to Tesla just like everybody else, you just might need two units of immortals to do it instead of one.

Thats a stretch of a statement, they have 2 wounds so they literally drop half as fast verse most troops in the game Tesla lacking any AP means it really struggles to kill marines, especially in cover. I love solar pulse, but your only pulsing one thing so pick your poison. Sure you will kill a few intersessors, but in return your going to lose way more immortals. By the time the immortals get in range they can switch to tactical doctrine, use steady advance and rapid fire. Thats 40 shots with a 30" threat range rerolling all hits and 1's to wound with ap -2 and the unit is the same cost as 10 immortals but has double the wounds and punches 3 times as hard in assault as well.

Then we hit into lack of snipers.

Also as for pylon problem is it works only vs 1 of 3 likely ih type. Leviathan laughs(3.2 wounds pre-fnp) so with 3 dda you don't even overcome turn repair rate. Ven dread/contemptator char spam is covered by character protection. So only repulsors and redemptors are really bothered by pylon and triple dda sight


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As for destroyers vs primaris i'm using destroyers to deal with vehicles. So vs primaris targets would be more like repulsors and the kind. Not basic infantry

Yeah OK, maybe all three units of Immortals.

Still, while they're very good they could be dealt with. My point is that we have basically no way of killing the characters hiding in the backline.

I agree that power creep has brought Destroyers down from their pedestal too. We just need a new book and a complete overhaul.

tneva82 wrote:
Then we hit into lack of snipers.

Also as for pylon problem is it works only vs 1 of 3 likely ih type. Leviathan laughs(3.2 wounds pre-fnp) so with 3 dda you don't even overcome turn repair rate. Ven dread/contemptator char spam is covered by character protection. So only repulsors and redemptors are really bothered by pylon and triple dda sight


Automatically Appended Next Post:
As for destroyers vs primaris i'm using destroyers to deal with vehicles. So vs primaris targets would be more like repulsors and the kind. Not basic infantry

Sure and don't get me wrong, I still think destroyers are good (I only run one full unit) but even verse a respulsor your doing ~14.5 wounds which doesn't kill it and your using a 300 point unit that will disappear the next turn. I generally recommend against trading like for like. Keep in mind BTW that I assume we are not playing IH in all these scenarios because IH are playing a different game at this point.

Basic infantry needs to be addressed though, because telsa just isn't gona do it really. 10 immortals with MWBD kills 3.5 primaris in the open. Issue being they have 30" range guns and we have 24" and move only 5" meaning we need to advance to match their range. If they have the +3" trait it is unlikely we ever get the first bite at the apple. When that unit can become 40 shots on the move at -2 it is a real problem. I am much more scared of the infantry then the vehicles, the infantry also mulches our vehicles.


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IanVanCheese wrote:
Yeah OK, maybe all three units of Immortals.

Still, while they're very good they could be dealt with. My point is that we have basically no way of killing the characters hiding in the backline.

I agree that power creep has brought Destroyers down from their pedestal too. We just need a new book and a complete overhaul.

It's much worse then that, one unit of 17ppm stalker marines will kill all our support characters pretty quickly. Overlords will take some hits, but you can kiss any crytek or lords that are visible goodbye. If you hide they don't care anyway, they shoot 36" with damage 2 -3 bolt guns lol.

Yeah destroyers don't one shot repulsor but 3 dda won't either. You need more and you can't afford to let live and heal 6 wounds. After dda destroyers are your best bet. Fire destroyers, then follow with dda until dead


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 Red Corsair wrote:
Las fusil eliminators in dev doctrine destroy our destroyers btw. Pun intended Especially in a castle or as salies. -4 flat 3 damage makes short work of them.
.

Imperial fist leviathan seems to become nasty destroyer destroyer as well. 20 S7 -2 D3 shots. Boom. Urgh. Seems imperial fist super doctrine is +1D to heavy weapons.

GW just keeps giving eh?

edit: seems luckily only vs vehicles and buildings. Still doomsday arks etc are going to go poof vs if.

barontuman wrote:
Glad to hear that we'll be seeing less knights. They rather ruined the game for me personally. I hate the larger models and would rather play with "miniatures" instead of "toys"

IH are worse than knights.

IanVanCheese wrote:
The other issue we have is that our snipers are awful, so we can't even take out the characters that are giving the buffs.

Just fly right next to a character with a doom scythe and kill him.

A stormhawk interceptor twin heavy bolter, twin assault cannon and icarus stormcannon for 159 points is a fearsome prospect for the usual necron lists that performed recently.
Imperial Fists ones will be especially brutal.

Shaelinith wrote:
A stormhawk interceptor twin heavy bolter, twin assault cannon and icarus stormcannon for 159 points is a fearsome prospect for the usual necron lists that performed recently.
Imperial Fists ones will be especially brutal.

Its worse with IH. It ignores the penalty for moving and shooting heavy weapons, it gets +1 to hit units with FLY. Number of wounds is doubled for the damage table, and it re-rolls hit rolls of 1 for heavy weapons. The stormtalon is pretty much the same, except it gets +1 to hit units which dont have FLY. Which means it hits on 2+, re-rolling 1s.

I played four games with IH, and won all four. IH = OP.

 p5freak wrote:

IanVanCheese wrote:
The other issue we have is that our snipers are awful, so we can't even take out the characters that are giving the buffs.

Just fly right next to a character with a doom scythe and kill him.

Depends on opponent being careless enough to allow doom scythe to get in suitable position. Also IH has for that case "get out of jail" card. They can turn nearby unit into bodyguard ala lychguard and turn wounds to character into mortal wounds vs that unit instead.

tneva82 wrote:

 p5freak wrote:

IanVanCheese wrote:
The other issue we have is that our snipers are awful, so we can't even take out the characters that are giving the buffs.

Just fly right next to a character with a doom scythe and kill him.

Depends on opponent being careless enough to allow doom scythe to get in suitable position. Also IH has for that case "get out of jail" card. They can turn nearby unit into bodyguard ala lychguard and turn wounds to character into mortal wounds vs that unit instead.

I know, i play IH. But this stratagem has to be used at the start of the shooting phase. Once you start shooting, it cant be played.

If you park doom scythe next to his character don't you think opponent will use it rather than risk losing -1dam buble? Assuming he even made mistake of allowing scythe to get there in the first place

tneva82 wrote:
If you park doom scythe next to his character don't you think opponent will use it rather than risk losing -1dam buble? Assuming he even made mistake of allowing scythe to get there in the first place

Doomscythe are not even great characters killers against power armor/invulnerable saves. Sure one Death Ray hit might go through, but you still need to roll high on damage, and you will have probably only one opportunity.

True that. Better hope for him to not trigger stratagem and use mortal wound boom. 3d3 is better odds. With command cp 75% odds of triggering. And if doom scythe isn't parked next to it maybe opponent forgets to trigger stratagem

tneva82 wrote:
True that. Better hope for him to not trigger stratagem and use mortal wound boom. 3d3 is better odds. With command cp 75% odds of triggering. And if doom scythe isn't parked next to it maybe opponent forgets to trigger stratagem

Characters are hit on 5+ with ATD. Its not 75%, its 50% i think.

 p5freak wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
True that. Better hope for him to not trigger stratagem and use mortal wound boom. 3d3 is better odds. With command cp 75% odds of triggering. And if doom scythe isn't parked next to it maybe opponent forgets to trigger stratagem

Characters are hit on 5+ with ATD. Its not 75%, its 50% i think.

Yeah, just a little over at 0.55%
It's not awfully bad and it would do some damage around, but it's not reliable either. I'm not sure we have something better to offer though. With some DDA support and Veiled Destroyers we could even do some damage. If we don't have first turn it's unlikely all Doomscythe will survive ...

Well i would still rank better than 1 scythe shooting alone. And not much other options either. Getting all destroyers into position where character is closest is optimistic at best. Ds is very easy to block to get character be closest

tneva82 wrote:
Well i would still rank better than 1 scythe shooting alone. And not much other options either. Getting all destroyers into position where character is closest is optimistic at best. Ds is very easy to block to get character be closest

I wasn't clear sorry. The idea of trying to snipe the Ironstone with Doomscythes is quite all-in, if i ever pull that move, i will probably double down with everything i can and veil destroyers to try to actually kill a vehicule before it's repaired.
In attrition warfare i don't see us winning, we're outranged, outdamaged and sadly, far less resilient (supposed to be our thing ...) but honestly, outside of very crowded terrain and try to win the scenario, i don't think we stand a chance in extended firefights.

Destroyers have no real use of sniping ironstone. Character protection makes getting destroyers into position to shoot character pretty slim. I'm lazy with screens and even i don't allow that sort of hole. Destroyers are better off hanging back at sides using terrain to minimize return fire.

A new supplement/codex gets released and we re back to bottom tier!

Well good thing is obviously every game won't be vs ih. Bad news is likely they are popular enough facing 1-2 in 5 games won't be that rare.

Good news is weapons good vs ih are bad against necrons so games vs non-ih might be easier

edit: Local tournament had 24 players. 3 of them IH. Took positions 1, 3 and 4. 2nd was ultramarines. Only games for IH that didn't end up in 20-0 win was the 11-9 game the 3rd and 4th shared between each other...

Necrons took 5th having crushed chaos and orks and being vaporized by one IH player.

Was the tomb blades 3+ or 5+ preferred? And if 3+ do you think with all the more AP marines are throwing around 5++ would be coming better option for them?

tneva82 wrote:
Was the tomb blades 3+ or 5+ preferred? And if 3+ do you think with all the more AP marines are throwing around 5++ would be coming better option for them?

3+ is better by a small margin, mostly because it's a couple of pts cheaper, I can find some math I did if you want? It obviously depends on match-up, but 5++ is pretty niche and 3+ is more or less always okay and often great for just 3 pts.

Thing is marines are rocking -2 saves rather easily even for their basic troops with some -3. If it wasnt' for marines I would be going for 3+ with couple 5+ to soak those lascannons but 3+ seems to go poof vs marines too easily.

 vict0988 wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Was the tomb blades 3+ or 5+ preferred? And if 3+ do you think with all the more AP marines are throwing around 5++ would be coming better option for them?

3+ is better by a small margin, mostly because it's a couple of pts cheaper, I can find some math I did if you want? It obviously depends on match-up, but 5++ is pretty niche and 3+ is more or less always okay and often great for just 3 pts.

Depending on how many you are a fielding, for larger squads it’s worth running a mix; preferentially tanking certain types of shots on different models (though remember that already wounded models must finish dying before changing the tanking model).

tneva82 wrote:
Thing is marines are rocking -2 saves rather easily even for their basic troops with some -3. If it wasnt' for marines I would be going for 3+ with couple 5+ to soak those lascannons but 3+ seems to go poof vs marines too easily.

Right, just have to remember that the 3+ save is the same as 5++ when facing AP-2, so no real benefit there.
It is only when those AP-3 starts targeting the Tomb Blades does the 5++ help in any way.

Yeah but it's not like -2 is cap. It's more of the base line. It's AP-2 AND worse coming your way. It's the 0 and -1 that have died away so now the 5+ is best case scenario you are looking at. So if 5++ is still pointless would the 3+ itself be any use either or should one be just cheaper?

Armour save as it is has gone way of doodoo in terms of being useful in 8th ed to begin with and marine codex is ramping up the trend.

Stalker boltguns in dev doctrine will steal tomb blades lunch.

OK so dumb list time. Going back to an old flavour of Necrons.

Battalion - Nihilakh
Command Barge: Warscythe, Gauss Cannon
Cryptek: Canoptek Cloak

3 x 5 Immortals

Super Heavy Detachment - Nihilakh
Pylon
Pylon
Tesseract vault

1999 pts

Thoughts?

tneva82 wrote:
Yeah but it's not like -2 is cap. It's more of the base line. It's AP-2 AND worse coming your way. It's the 0 and -1 that have died away so now the 5+ is best case scenario you are looking at. So if 5++ is still pointless would the 3+ itself be any use either or should one be just cheaper?

Armour save as it is has gone way of doodoo in terms of being useful in 8th ed to begin with and marine codex is ramping up the trend.

You know, thinking about it more, with so many things that are AP-1 or better, would it be a good thing to save the points and just kit them out as 4+/5++ (if you are not kitting out for ignore cover)?

Umm that was pretty much what i was going for(btw i never did 3+/5++ obviously). Before 3+ was generally useful with odd 5++ to intercept odd lascannon/dread fist. Now with -2 becoming norm(poor immortals) was thinking is there point for 5++ as standard.

Bigger issue than cost is imo losing ignore cover(price was same before anyway. 5 pts for 5++, 5pts for 3+ and ignore cover.

Either way i'm expecting to rol for 5's at best.

I never took ignore cover personally anyway. Just the +1 save. But I guess I am the less common dude that swears by gaus blasters, which need it less and I can always solar pulse in a pinch. Either way I am not sure the 5++ is worth it, I usually find my bikes are getting hit by volume more then high AP. Even when it's both I rarely encounter higher then -2, so I still have a 5+ but I do often encounter loads of ap- and having that 3+ or 2+ in cover is huge.

Well there's enough cover here that the 2+ saves becomes rather hard to deal. And solar pulse costs CP plus ensures other units can't do it.

tneva82 wrote:
Well there's enough cover here that the 2+ saves becomes rather hard to deal. And solar pulse costs CP plus ensures other units can't do it.

Well then you have your answer. I have no idea what gun your running, which makes a pretty big difference too. Like I said, I run gauss blasters on my TB's. I get enough ap- on my immortals. You need to get closer but with a 14" move and fly it isn't an issue plus I can assault to tie something up and if I play it right I can wrap the target pretty easily since TB's hit like a pillow in melee but are tougher then $2 steak.

How does necrons stands against SM 2.0 ? Have you found it to be an uphill, a difficult battle ? Or more or less the same as before?

 godardc wrote:
How does necrons stands against SM 2.0 ? Have you found it to be an uphill, a difficult battle ? Or more or less the same as before?

No way same as before. They got tons of new buffs with zero debuffs and also point drops so they took HUGE up. And it shows already in tournaments with top-4 more and more held by either ultramarines or even more likely iron hands. Hate to sound pessimistic but necrons are totally screwed against iron hands. Their vehicles are ridiculously tough even without considering leviathan(which you just need to accept you are not going to kill. Consider this: Pylon and three doomsday ark barely equal their REPAIR RATE. So you need more than pylon and 3 doomsday ark to cause more damage in average than he repairs in a turn!!!) the vehicles are going to be resisting your fire. Destroyers? With average damage of 1.3333 per wound past save they aren't doing enough. They can sport -2 to hit flyers which fire tons of S5 fire to make mess of your infantry. Thunderfire cannons fire out of LOS more infantry killing stuff. And good luck dealing with say tripple executioner repulsor list. Pylon and 3 dda will just about kill one a turn.

Expect to see armies like the 5++ bubble guy and -1 damage bubble supporting triple executioners. Or triple flyers. And invictor suits with long range guns are looking to be rather popular.

And in case you are hoping to play mission...Keep in mind this gunline is not actually static as it can move and shoot at will...So they can move around to get those objectives as well.

ATM marines 2.0 are looking to be way above others.

 godardc wrote:
How does necrons stands against SM 2.0 ? Have you found it to be an uphill, a difficult battle ? Or more or less the same as before?

Had a tough game vs new marines running a leafblower tank castle (x2 Sicarian Punishers, x2 Redemptors, a Deredeo, hellblasters, intercessors, Chapter Master)...stayed in the heavy doctrine all game (was using the Raven Guard Cover Tactic, and the Salamanders Re-roll to hit/wound tactic). I deployed pretty evenly, and seized the initiative, and had to capitalize on reducing his firepower so I could survive long enough to get a big point lead.

I noted that our infantry are so darn squishy....and AP-2 heavy bolters made it painfully obvious. I had 20 warriors, and 2x10 immortals.They were all dead by the bottom of turn 3.
I also noted that the perma-cover from Raven Guard made tesla feel nearly useless. Everything had a 2+ save, constantly. It was obnoxious.

I still managed to pull out a win by playing objectives and using doomsday arks at extreme range to pick off tanks, and my wraiths successfully suicide charged the castle just to tie 50% of it up for a turn.

MVPs....were probably my 2x4 scarabs zooming around with Nephrehk to grab objectives all game, assisting me greatly in scoring domination on a gamble, which was worth 3+d3, x2 points, resulting in 12 points, causing an immediate concession. As the score was roughly 22 to 4

There are some matchups where Tesla becomes excruciatingly ineffective. Custodes with that -1 to hit relic comes to mind

New ravenguard is also nasty. 2+ armour and -1 to hit when they are in cover. Bloody hell. And solar pulse negates just the save bonus, not the -1. And necron's arent' exactly getting close fast...

seeing 3+ and 5++ used in the same sentence, what exactly do people mean by these notations, I thought I knew but not so certain now, I assume that 3+ and 3++, for example, don't mean the same thing. I thought they did.

X+ is armor.

X++ is Invulnerable.

X+++ is FNP.

FNP= ignore wounds

It's short hand by older players but not called feel no pain anymore.

And our poor vehicles are going to get massacred by imperial fists. Heavy bolters with d2 and exploding 6's, assault cannons with d2 etc. Meanwhile they will also do numbers on our infantry with easily 100 shots with exploding 6's. Ugh.

Kill power in 40k is getting ridiculous. Starts to be that warriors should be 3+ and immortals t5 or w2 or both to keep up

Getting? Kill power in 40k was ludicrous form the start of 8th and somehow has managed to derail further. I called this during the summer of 8th dropping.
-Hike points so new standard increases from 1850 to 2000. Check

-Increase Damage output across the board so games appear faster. Check

-Slowly but steadily drop points back to 7th edition standard so folks are playing with massive armies. Check

-Profit

But in order to keep the game exciting they have to continue to add bloat lol. So now the game is this unwieldy mess reduced to who stacked more filth in their list.

The game already needs a reset, desperately. Personally I think they royally dropped the ball with free relics and stratagems. There is no objective way to balance those tings, in a game that is already incredibly difficult to balance.

Strats should have been released with the seasonal chapter approved and been universal. Change them up each year to alter the meta and keep the game fresh and evolving. Everyone should have access to the same pool of them. Instead we still only have 3 basic strats, but about 500+ "unique" snowflake strats. It's stupid. CP's should have also been handled better, you should get them on a sliding scale from detachments based on points invested. You spend 200 on a battalion you get 3, you spend 500, you get 5 etc. This helps prevent whoring out cheap factions as CP batteries and lets armies like custodes play from a single battalion.

There's no denying we need a buff across the board. Even a Psychic Awakening book is only going to be a stopgap because so much of our army needs fixing. best we can hope for in PA is Imotekh and Flayed Ones combo in plastic (which I'm all about tbf)

I am pretty confident we'll be getting a new book next year though. We have too much finecast to fix with just a PA book and they want rid of it asap.

IanVanCheese wrote:
There's no denying we need a buff across the board. Even a Psychic Awakening book is only going to be a stopgap because so much of our army needs fixing. best we can hope for in PA is Imotekh and Flayed Ones combo in plastic (which I'm all about tbf)

I am pretty confident we'll be getting a new book next year though. We have too much finecast to fix with just a PA book and they want rid of it asap.

I'm not quite that confident. If the rumours are true, we can expect a Psychic Awakening book every month for the next five month. That leave little room for other releases/books imho.

Seeing how PA is quite underwhelming for Drukhari, i fear that PA will not be enough, and that we will not see a codex mark 2 soon.

PA is a stop-gap - a way to release new stuff and give it rules without having to redo a whole codex. It won't stop them redoing codexes, it just means other armies get stuff in the interim too.

Hopefully anyway...

IanVanCheese wrote:
There's no denying we need a buff across the board. Even a Psychic Awakening book is only going to be a stopgap because so much of our army needs fixing. best we can hope for in PA is Imotekh and Flayed Ones combo in plastic (which I'm all about tbf)

I am pretty confident we'll be getting a new book next year though. We have too much finecast to fix with just a PA book and they want rid of it asap.

One issue necrons have is all this lethality increase makes necron rules more and more irrelevant. Rp? Useless(and with that crypteks and ghost arks). Living metal? Nope. Quantum shielding also losing with all new d2 spam's.

Finecast removal has been theorised for years but at the current rate we are looking at 12th edition codex for that

tneva82 wrote:

IanVanCheese wrote:
There's no denying we need a buff across the board. Even a Psychic Awakening book is only going to be a stopgap because so much of our army needs fixing. best we can hope for in PA is Imotekh and Flayed Ones combo in plastic (which I'm all about tbf)

I am pretty confident we'll be getting a new book next year though. We have too much finecast to fix with just a PA book and they want rid of it asap.

One issue necrons have is all this lethality increase makes necron rules more and more irrelevant. Rp? Useless(and with that crypteks and ghost arks). Living metal? Nope. Quantum shielding also losing with all new d2 spam's.

Finecast removal has been theorised for years but at the current rate we are looking at 12th edition codex for that

Yeah Quantum Shielding isn't what it once was. I think it'll get changed to -1 damage next time around ala wave serpents. We need changes to our survivability rules though, agreed. My theory on Crypteks is that they'll gain similar abilities to chaplains. 6 options, all throwbacks to the old customisation options they had. RP will get some sort of buff (Res orbs work on dead units is my guess).

That's not strictly true. People have chosen volume fire every edition of the game. And it has been the go to method for dealing with things like knights etc. since they have invulns. If anything our quantum shielding went UP in value since folks will probably be ditching the damage two with the iron stone in the meta.

I honestly can say I hope they don't change quantum shielding, it's one of the most unique and flavorful rules in the game. That said, they could tie it to the degradation table. On full power it could be as is now plus reduce damage, mid way just as is now and lowest bracket it's gone. This would make living metal more interesting as well, since it would be self repairing and bringing full shields back online slowly.

The biggest issue with our tanks is the garbage armor save and toughness. Why would solid living alien metal be low toughness and armor lol?

That and tesla needs a rework. The lack of AP makes it silly. At least make it ignore cover verse armor 3+ or better or something, it's electricity after all.

IanVanCheese wrote:
Yeah Quantum Shielding isn't what it once was. I think it'll get changed to -1 damage next time around ala wave serpents. We need changes to our survivability rules though, agreed. My theory on Crypteks is that they'll gain similar abilities to chaplains. 6 options, all throwbacks to the old customisation options they had. RP will get some sort of buff (Res orbs work on dead units is my guess).

I hope you are right

I fear that Necron are not a top seller and are not high on the redoing/reworking priority list for GW. The consistency of GW designing non working special rules (RP, Tomb World comes to mind, but the spyder's scarab regeneration is hilariously bad), or plain absence of rule, does not make me very optimistic about the amount of work they are ready to give some factions.

The space marine rework may be a once-in-edition one. It seems they worked a lot on this one. On the other hand, the last CSM book is supposedly a 2nd edition (it's even labelled on the book), and it's rather disappointing.

If we get a new book like the CSM one, we're toasted for the rest of the edition. But to be fair, as we have no new units (like shadowspear) i don't know why they would do a new codex in the first place.

 Red Corsair wrote:
That's not strictly true. People have chosen volume fire every edition of the game. And it has been the go to method for dealing with things like knights etc. since they have invulns. If anything our quantum shielding went UP in value since folks will probably be ditching the damage two with the iron stone in the meta.

I honestly can say I hope they don't change quantum shielding, it's one of the most unique and flavorful rules in the game. That said, they could tie it to the degradation table. On full power it could be as is now plus reduce damage, mid way just as is now and lowest bracket it's gone. This would make living metal more interesting as well, since it would be self repairing and bringing full shields back online slowly.

The biggest issue with our tanks is the garbage armor save and toughness. Why would solid living alien metal be low toughness and armor lol?

That and tesla needs a rework. The lack of AP makes it silly. At least make it ignore cover verse armor 3+ or better or something, it's electricity after all.

Any buff to Tesla will come with the added change that it'll be unmodified 6s explode. It's been that way for everything recently. It's both a nerf and a buff, but it does negate the current MWBD shenanigans that we use. Tbh, I doubt tesla will be buffed at all, they'll buff our other infantry/weapons first.

I agree that QS is cool and unique, I hope it stays as is. I just doubt it will. I wouldn't mind our QS vehicles staying weak if the non-QS ones got a lot tougher. The monolith is a joke atm. I genuinely don't think they'd see much play if you halved their points. They need a total rework.

One issue with monolith is that if you have just 1 or 2 portal it'" basically inferior transport method. To have benefit from it you would need several. But no cheap portals. And monolith needs ds which leaves little room for guys inside...

It should be slow, but nearly unkillable. I always thought it should regen back to full wounds at the start of the turn if you didn't finish it It's essentially a solid brick of living metal.

It's more realistic to expect an invuln and maybe a 2+ save though

Honestly we need wargear tweaks most. Warscythes for example should have a mortal wound mechanic, they used to ignore invulns lol. Better armor saves. longer ranges etc.

It needs to be able to deepstrike anywhere without impunity.
The reason why it had deepstrike protection is because the devs knew back then that if it didn't, then it won't be able to land anywhere because of its size.

Then it lost it in 5th ed because the new devs didn't realize that, so now we are stuck with a support vehicle that's too slow to move on the table and too big to deepstrike. Its just bad design, and GW needs to get their gak together and think things through for more than 10 seconds.

Being able to land anywhere (but still not get dudes out until the turn after) or as is, but dudes can disembark at once would be great.

Agree that it needs a 2+/5++ at a minimum. Also better weapons and a better version of the portal of exile. Living metal needs to go to D3 as standard for all vehicles too.

So not asking much, but it is one of the most underpowered units in the game currently (along with the Obelisk).

It's an obvious victim of 8th edition beta rules as well.

The clunky wording preventing the Monolith from dropping units off the turn it arrives would have been somewhat mitigated by it's ability to deep strike turn one. Now of course it can't, so unless it starts on the table (or gets destroyed Turn 2) you can't get troops out of it till Turn 3. The Codex version of it I believe is barely different from the Index datasheet.

It exists with a design philosophy remains wildly behind the pace of this edition.

dapperbandit wrote:
It's an obvious victim of 8th edition beta rules as well.

The clunky wording preventing the Monolith from dropping units off the turn it arrives would have been somewhat mitigated by it's ability to deep strike turn one. Now of course it can't, so unless it starts on the table (or gets destroyed Turn 2) you can't get troops out of it till Turn 3. The Codex version of it I believe is barely different from the Index datasheet.

It exists with a design philosophy remains wildly behind the pace of this edition.

This is a really good point. You should email this in for Spring FAQ consideration.

So I've just come back after a long-ish hiatus of not following 40k, and my god do the new marines looked roided to gak and back.

How are necrons fairing now that marines have better versions of our gauss rifles, and imperial fists have inbuilt tesla on all their bolters?
Is it even worth playing any xenos race bar flying eldar

Its not just xenos, its any faction, except eldar flyer spam.

 Eonfuzz wrote:
So I've just come back after a long-ish hiatus of not following 40k, and my god do the new marines looked roided to gak and back.

How are necrons fairing now that marines have better versions of our gauss rifles, and imperial fists have inbuilt tesla on all their bolters?
Is it even worth playing any xenos race bar flying eldar

It’s totally worth it! We’ve got all sorts of cool, fluffy units and rules; from Silver Tide armies to Eldritch Robo-Insectoids to Techni-Marvel Machines. We can play narratively fixed fortress style lists to undead menace lists too.

These are all tactically viable for casual gaming environments.

We are not a Tier 1 army in competitions, however, if that’s what you’re asking.

 Eonfuzz wrote:
So I've just come back after a long-ish hiatus of not following 40k, and my god do the new marines looked roided to gak and back.

How are necrons fairing now that marines have better versions of our gauss rifles, and imperial fists have inbuilt tesla on all their bolters?
Is it even worth playing any xenos race bar flying eldar

Necrons were the best SM counter according to the stats up to October tenth, past that IDK. I've only played one game against nu-SM and my opponent was bringing a significantly more tuned list than I was IMO, but the amount by which I got destroyed got me a little down, I haven't lost all hope, just most of it. If all you care about is winning just go play IH, you can still win with Necrons, especially if you think good or roll good.

Gauss now needs better AP, I mean how the heck does a Bolt Rifle deliver more AP than Gauss.

Tesla now needs to explode on unmodified 5s or generate 4 hits on 6s, to at least be unique or on par with new Space Marines.

Our HQs need reduced points and our Doomsday Arks need a fixed or less variable shot output or damage.

Then some models just need a rework, like Monoliths, Obelisks, Lychguard etc..

Yeah gauss is in sorry state. Maybe dam2 on 6 to wound?

Tesla i'm less worried if it stays as is. If equilavent is 2 hits on unmodified 6. Tesla 3 on 6+. Now if tesla goes to Unmodified 6 then necrons need something to compensate(ignore cover could be nice)

There are lots of ways I've seen people suggest Gauss be improved - up till now I'd have said their requests were largely unrealistic but I think its fair to say now with the ridiculous proliferation of AP through the Combat Doctrines that Gauss deserves a facelift.

+1 to wound vehicles/monsters or 2D on a 6 to wound.

I've been thinking all Gauss weapons should do a MW on unmodified 6's to hit.

It's basically how they worked before, and, in light of all the new releases, doesn't seem overpowered. It's not like we have gun options, we're built around Gauss being awesome. Warriors should be a threat to everything.

Please no, MWs are bad enough as a mechanic without "standard" guns being able to do them.
Flat 2d would be decent - overkill Vs 1W troops but decent against 2W+ and puts pressure on FNP armies.

Gauss's mechanic should be:
Ablative Disintegration - Whenever a model receives an unsaved wound from a Gauss weapon, reduce its invulnerable save by 1 until the end of your turn. If it has no invulnerable save, instead reduce its armor save by 1.

Would give Gauss weapons a rather unique position across all armies while also not delving head first into power creep (lmao, space marines).

Goooooosh no. a) what justification for that? b) sloooooooooooooooooow. Imagine multi wound unit with inv save(no such thing out there?). You would have to roll every single save roll individually. 8th ed is already slow as hell. No need to slow down more. You want slower than Rogue trader times 2?-)

tneva82 wrote:
Goooooosh no. a) what justification for that? b) sloooooooooooooooooow. Imagine multi wound unit with inv save(no such thing out there?). You would have to roll every single save roll individually. 8th ed is already slow as hell. No need to slow down more. You want slower than Rogue trader times 2?-)

The idea was to let Gauss do *something* about those 3++ knights, or *something* about those 4++ IH fortresses.
Small gauss fire to strip outside protection and weaken any fields present, followed by heavier weaponry to nail home the damage.

In any case, time taken is something I didn't really consider.

I think just adding +1 damage is fine for gauss on an unmodified 6 is fine.
Gives warriors and immortals a bit more bite, and it still works well with variable damage gauss weapons.

Maybe increase it to +2 damage against vehicles, as a nod to that old rule.

tneva82 wrote:
Goooooosh no. a) what justification for that? b) sloooooooooooooooooow. Imagine multi wound unit with inv save(no such thing out there?). You would have to roll every single save roll individually. 8th ed is already slow as hell. No need to slow down more. You want slower than Rogue trader times 2?-)

To be fair, i will never understand how GW can think that fast rolling is not the way everybody plays and write rules resolving those conflictings cases accordindly. Multi damage weapon against multi wound units is such a pain in the ass too.

Iron hands got nerfed guys.

Iron father now gives 5++ to infantry models now. So no more 5++ repulsor and/or other non-infantry models.

Iron stone relic now affects iron hand vehicle unit each battle round. So no more Reducing damage aura. Just 1 IH vehicle unit.

Startgem to make a Dreadnought a Charcter is Once Per game, few stratagems got point increases and, possibly the only positive thing from the FaQ, of you make a dreado your Warlord before using the startgem to make it a charcter. You can give it a Warlord trait.

The warlord trait thinie was already possible though guess good to clarify.

But phew. Bit more palpatable. Makes still one tough repulsor to deal but at least the other vehicles aren't that ridiculously tough anymore.

tneva82 wrote:
The warlord trait thinie was already possible though guess good to clarify.

But phew. Bit more palpatable. Makes still one tough repulsor to deal but at least the other vehicles aren't that ridiculously tough anymore.

What I find really funny is that certain folks were telling people not to focus on the leviathan because other things were MOAR broken. But in the end the leviathan didn't get hit by this beyond the odd strat going up a CP

Repulsers are now fair. Marine players will say they got screwed but they are still really good. If one starts to bitch I'll just hold up the monolith page

 Red Corsair wrote:
Repulsers are now fair. Marine players will say they got screwed but they are still really good. If one starts to bitch I'll just hold up the monolith page

Yeah, for a similar price tag the Monolith is so much outranged and outdamaged that it's quite depressing. But Tomb World deployment is such a great rule to compensate /s

Shaelinith wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Repulsers are now fair. Marine players will say they got screwed but they are still really good. If one starts to bitch I'll just hold up the monolith page

Yeah, for a similar price tag the Monolith is so much outranged and outdamaged that it's quite depressing. But Tomb World deployment is such a great rule to compensate /s

I hate to sound cynical but it's a 20+ year old kit. I don't think it will ever be very good ever again.

Unless they decide to update the kit to be made easier. It makes for good Terrain.

I agree. I always thought that GW would push the Obelisk to become the new version of the Monolith. When was the Monolith even a viable unit in competitive play?

Before the recon, when it was amazing. Just like Warriors.

elook wrote:
I agree. I always thought that GW would push the Obelisk to become the new version of the Monolith. When was the Monolith even a viable unit in competitive play?

One or two crazy people made Obelisks+Monoliths work in 7th, less successful than Destroyers and Canopteks but I remember a Monolith list winning a tournament.

 Red Corsair wrote:
I hate to sound cynical but it's a 20+ year old kit. I don't think it will ever be very good ever again.

Clearly old kit rarely have attention from designers, but some are at least playable, even good sometimes (Leman Russ with tank commanders or Wave Serpent).

With marines having a lot of new kits, i quite understand why the new ones needs to be better, but for Necron, making the Monolith playable doesn't "steal" our attention from other Necron kits for heavier véhicule because there is none

But yeah, i think you're right, in the end, the poor Monololith is not worthy of 10 minutes of attention of the design team, it's already too much.

elook wrote:When was the Monolith even a viable unit in competitive play?

Blndmage wrote:Before the recon, when it was amazing. Just like Warriors.

Yeah, in 4th edition, Monoliths were great. Nearly unkillable in most games. I even had times were a Monolith soaked up fire from a Baneblade for 5-6 turns and was still kicking.

Plus, the ability to Deepstrike anywhere was also really handy. I actually own 5, for the old Apocalypse formation of a Nodal Grid. I remember playing it once, I think it was something like 8 or 9,000 points of my Necrons vs. Guard and Marines and even a Thunderhawk with a D-strength weapon (I can't recall it's name) barely made a dent in any of them. The good ol' days...

Shaelinith wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
I hate to sound cynical but it's a 20+ year old kit. I don't think it will ever be very good ever again.

Clearly old kit rarely have attention from designers, but some are at least playable, even good sometimes (Leman Russ with tank commanders or Wave Serpent).

Both of these have relatively recent updates actually. They redid the kits almost entirely and reboxed them, so while they are getting older for sure the monolith has them beat by at least a decade.

Hey Guys.
My local gaming group decided that i can Mix my weapon Option in my lychguard squats.

What so you Guys think would bei A good Ratio scythe to shield+sword?

Surtr wrote:
Hey Guys.
My local gaming group decided that i can Mix my weapon Option in my lychguard squats.

What so you Guys think would bei A good Ratio scythe to shield+sword?

Depends on whether you have a Cryptek with a chronometron to babysit them or if your list does not include a Cryptek or you plan to launch the Lychguard into a T1 charge with the Veil of Darkness relic. I'd take at least 1 shield/4 warscythes and at least 1 warscythe/4 shields. Proxy before you assemble and paint, try 80% shields, 80% scythes and 50/50 and see what feels best. I like to launch mine with Veil of Darkness and I always take a Chronotek when I bring Lychguard so I just go pure warscythes, if I had the option I'd take 20% shields in all my units.

My Plan ist to Run them with an overlord

Hey, everyone! As of this weekend, my necron collection is within spitting distance of being fieldable at my local game night. How do people feel about mass infiltration (with the Deceiver) and teleportation?

Being able to have all my warriors in double-tap range on turn 1 with a ctan, tomb stalker, wraiths and scarabs scurryingforward for turn 2 charges seems like it might have some potential.

Wyldhunt wrote:
Hey, everyone! As of this weekend, my necron collection is within spitting distance of being fieldable at my local game night. How do people feel about mass infiltration (with the Deceiver) and teleportation?

Being able to have all my warriors in double-tap range on turn 1 with a ctan, tomb stalker, wraiths and scarabs scurryingforward for turn 2 charges seems like it might have some potential.

It's not going to work against most competitive armies, especially not SM. I hope your game night does not feature too many competitive people. The Deceiver is one of the more effective ways of playing mass Warriors but as the power creeps he keeps falling further and further from viability, Warriors themselves aren't amazing no matter how you play them. A triplette of Doomsday Arks can make most lists seem near-competitive though, I might recommend trying something like that if you expect heavy resistance, maybe work up from 1 as you lose games. I did win a game with 60 Novokh Warriors against Deathwatch/Astra Militarum and a pet Knight, my opponent was green and he'd picked an off-meta (useless) WL trait/Relic combo on his Knight. I'll warn everybody not to charge a unit armed with several frag cannons from within 8", killed 20 Warriors on Overwatch though.

I had a spectator who was sure I was at a disadvantage, but when you believe in your models and your dice they perform better. MWBD teleport nerfs? Lost belief and lost all my games. SM release? Lost belief and lost against them. I guess what I should be saying you'll have an easy time reconquering the galaxy.

I thought the MWBD Teleport nerf got reversed in an FAQ?

What nerf that was?

tneva82 wrote:
What nerf that was?

GW devs told the ITC head judge that MWBD and similar abilities wore off when a unit was removed from the table and entered again as if coming from reinforcements. They walked it back as you will know from the VoD/Da Jump FAQ.

I had a very successful game this weekend vs my friend's Imperial Fists Seigebreaker Cohort list using my Seraptek Gunline at 2k points
List


Long story short, we both deployed aggressively, intending to strike a decisive turn 1 blow. The Necrons got initiative, and blew 6 devastator centurions off the board, and a squad of heavy bolter devastators (The whole seigebreaker cohort) as a proverbial KALI-MA, ripping the heart out of the fists army. The fists turn 1 was ineffective, failing to score first strike, reducing my destroyers to 1 model, and one squad of immortals to 2 models.
Game was over bottom of turn 2, as still no Necron squads had been destroyed, reanimations were effective, and they were up on points.

Why do I mention this? The meta for many marines is shifting towards Aggressors and Centurions, neither of which has an invuln save base.
We're very, VERY good at killing such targets with the right units.

On another nice note, for once in it's life, the Seraptek actually probably over-performed. So thats cool.

What dep rules you used? Here it's 1 side deploys first and goes first so either you seized(luck), opponent played poorly counting on seize or you use some other method(this one is good to reduce this sort of 1st turn alpha)


Automatically Appended Next Post:
There's coming tournament next month. No mention of style so I presume competive. I want to bring the pylon in(hey expensive model and going to be fairly new painting wise...). How about this?


Nihilik for pylon for the +1 saving throw stratagem if I expect to face heavy bombardment(too bad it doesn't help the inv bubble ). 2 CP bit steep with just 7CP to begin with so not going to use if I feel don't need. But 4++ on pylon sounds useful. And don't think other faction stratagems are any use for it anyway.

7 tesla squad to fit 4 scarab swarms into the list for some screening.

tneva82 wrote:
What dep rules you used? Here it's 1 side deploys first and goes first so either you seized(luck), opponent played poorly counting on seize or you use some other method(this one is good to reduce this sort of 1st turn alpha)

We used the base alternating drops/deployment, I had fewer drops, getting a +1 to the roll off and I won the roll-off to go first, he failed to seize. We played a malestorm mission. The cards themselves were fairly inconsequential, and the terrain mirrored an ITC-style setup with LOS blockers in the middle.

So a small group of friends of mine are going to be having a open game campaign with a single customs character with list starting at 20 PL. so far we have an ork player, eldar player, and a guard player and myself with necron.

At 20 PL its pretty limiting on what to bring but mostly i was thinking about the custom character (starting at hero and growing as it gets exp). I'm thinking of cryptek with cloak and go "fast" with a 6 man unit of tomb blades for the cryptek to follow around bu not entirely sure what to give my custom character aside from 2 more inches for speed to keep up. thoughts? suggestions?

Oberron wrote:
So a small group of friends of mine are going to be having a open game campaign with a single customs character with list starting at 20 PL. so far we have an ork player, eldar player, and a guard player and myself with necron.

At 20 PL its pretty limiting on what to bring but mostly i was thinking about the custom character (starting at hero and growing as it gets exp). I'm thinking of cryptek with cloak and go "fast" with a 6 man unit of tomb blades for the cryptek to follow around bu not entirely sure what to give my custom character aside from 2 more inches for speed to keep up. thoughts? suggestions?

What are the rules for Custom Character Creation?

Check chapter approved 2018

Oberron wrote:
So a small group of friends of mine are going to be having a open game campaign with a single customs character with list starting at 20 PL. so far we have an ork player, eldar player, and a guard player and myself with necron.

At 20 PL its pretty limiting on what to bring but mostly i was thinking about the custom character (starting at hero and growing as it gets exp). I'm thinking of cryptek with cloak and go "fast" with a 6 man unit of tomb blades for the cryptek to follow around bu not entirely sure what to give my custom character aside from 2 more inches for speed to keep up. thoughts? suggestions?

If you want to maximize the efficiency of the build you'll want to select the most powerful base hero and then build on top of that or go heavily into making a support character. If you select a Cryptek or Lord you'll get very little benefit from personal upgrades and even if you just make a buffing hero you'll have your hero destroyed relatively easily by Eldar snipers and psychic powers. That said there's nothing wrong with picking something cool if your friends are doing the same, I would actually recommend you all get together and roll for the traits of your heroes, that's going to limit the amount of OP builds people produce. The more powerful CHARACTER datasheets for the Necrons are the Catacomb Command Barge, Destroyer Lord and Transcendent C'tan. The Transcendent C'tan cannot get a WL trait or Relic but they can still get pretty nasty, Overlords are okay if you don't have any of the former 3.

The following are good for a Catacomb Command Barge, Destroyer Lord and Transcendent C'tan and decent for an Overlord:



For a Catacomb Command Barge the following are also useful for a Hero, but only if you go more or less all-in on these:



The following are going to be good for later upgrades or if you decide to take a Lord or Cryptek as your Hero:



The following are our good relics for a Hero: Voidreaper, Lightning Field (Catacomb Command Barge), The Nightmare Shroud, The Veil of Darkness (must-have somewhere in your list as you go up in PL, only mandatory if you go the support route early on), The Nanoscarab Casket, The Abyssal Staff (Cryptek with Canoptek Cloak), The Voltaic Staff (Catacomb Command Barge with Merciless Tyrant only), The Blood Scythe.

I'll leave 6 suggested builds below:

 vict0988 wrote:

If you want to maximize the efficiency of the build you'll want to select the most powerful base hero and then build on top of that or go heavily into making a support character. If you select a Cryptek or Lord you'll get very little benefit from personal upgrades and even if you just make a buffing hero you'll have your hero destroyed relatively easily by Eldar snipers and psychic powers. That said there's nothing wrong with picking something cool if your friends are doing the same, I would actually recommend you all get together and roll for the traits of your heroes, that's going to limit the amount of OP builds people produce. The more powerful CHARACTER datasheets for the Necrons are the Catacomb Command Barge, Destroyer Lord and Transcendent C'tan. The Transcendent C'tan cannot get a WL trait or Relic but they can still get pretty nasty, Overlords are okay if you don't have any of the former 3.

The following are good for a Catacomb Command Barge, Destroyer Lord and Transcendent C'tan and decent for an Overlord:

Spoiler:

Grudge: You can re-roll any hit, wound and damage rolls made for this model’s attacks that target the enemy Warlord.

Resilient: Each time this model loses a wound, roll a dice; on a 5+ it does not lose that wound.

Stealth Assault: Enemy units cannot fire Overwatch at this model.

Indomitable: All damage suffered by this model is halved (rounding up).

Strike and Fade: After this model has fought in the Fight phase, it can immediately pile in D3+3" in any direction, not just towards the closest enemy model.

Finely Balanced: Pick one of this model’s melee weapons. Add the following ability to that weapon: ‘Each time the bearer fights, it can make 1 additional attack with this weapon.’

Shredder: Pick one of this model’s melee weapons. Add the following ability to that weapon: ‘You can re-roll failed wound rolls for attacks made with this weapon.’

Heirloom: Pick one of this model’s melee weapons. Add the following ability to that weapon: ‘Each unmodified hit roll of 6 made for attacks with this weapon scores 2 hits instead of 1’.

Artificer Weapon: Pick one of this model’s weapons. Add 1 to that weapon’s Damage characteristic.

Toughened Armour: Improve this model’s Save characteristic by 1 (e.g. Sv 5+ will become Sv 4+), to a maximum of 2+.

Divine Protection: Improve this model’s invulnerable save by 1 (e.g. an invulnerable save of 5+ will become an invulnerable save of 4+), to a maximum of 3+. If this model does not have an invulnerable save, it instead gains a 6+ invulnerable save.

For a Catacomb Command Barge the following are also useful for a Hero, but only if you go more or less all-in on these:

Spoiler:

Deadly Marksman: Add 1 to the Damage characteristic of ranged weapons used by this model.

Sundering Shots: Each wound roll of 6+ made for this model’s ranged attacks inflicts 1 mortal wound on the target in addition to any normal damage.

Keen Eye: This model can target enemy CHARACTER units in the Shooting phase even if they are not the closest enemy model.

Auto-loader: Pick one of this model’s ranged weapons. Increase the number of shots this weapon makes by 1 (e.g. a Pistol 1 weapon becomes a Pistol 2 weapon).

Penetrator Rounds: Pick one of this model’s ranged weapons. Improve that weapon’s AP characteristic by 1 (e.g. AP -1 becomes AP -2)

The following are going to be good for later upgrades or if you decide to take a Lord or Cryptek as your Hero:

Spoiler:

Inspirational Fighter: Re-roll hit rolls of 1 in the Fight phase for friendly <SUB-FACTION> units within 6" of this model.

Targeting Augury: Enemy units do not gain the benefit of cover to their saving throws against attacks made by friendly <SUBFACTION> units within 6" of this model when the attack is made.

Directed Fire: Re-roll hit rolls of 1 in the Shooting phase for friendly <SUB-FACTION> units within 6" of this model.

Reactive Tactics: This model, and friendly <SUB-FACTION> units within 6" of them, can charge even if they Fell Back that turn.

Direct Fire: Each time you make a wound roll of 6+ in the Shooting phase for a friendly <SUB-FACTION> unit within 6" of this
model, the AP characteristic of that attack is improved by 1 (e.g. AP -1 becomes AP -2).

The following are our good relics for a Hero: Voidreaper, Lightning Field (Catacomb Command Barge), The Nightmare Shroud, The Veil of Darkness (must-have somewhere in your list as you go up in PL, only mandatory if you go the support route early on), The Nanoscarab Casket, The Abyssal Staff (Cryptek with Canoptek Cloak), The Voltaic Staff (Catacomb Command Barge with Merciless Tyrant only), The Blood Scythe.

I'll leave 6 suggested builds below:

Spoiler:

Mephrit sniper Catacomb Command Barge Hero WL with a Relic. Take tesla cannon and staff of light. Replace staff of light with The Voltaic Staff Relic. Take the Merciless Tyrant Warlord Trait. His Hero traits will be Deadly Marksman for himself Penetrator Rounds, Artificer Weapon and Sundering Shots for his tesla cannon.

The hard to hit Nephrekh Catacomb Command Barge Hero WL with a Relic. Take a gauss cannon and warscythe. Take the Lightning Field Relic. Take the Skin of Living Gold Warlord Trait. His Hero traits will be Resilient, Stealth Assault, Indomitable and Divine Protection.

The blender/support Novokh Destroyer Lord Hero WL with a Relic. Take a warscythe and phylactery. Take the Bloodscythe Relic. Take the Crimson Haze WL Trait. His Hero traits will be Indomitable, Inspirational Fighter and Divine Protection. Blademaster isn't worth taking on a Lord or Cryptek and has no effect on Overlords and CCBs, for a Destroyer Lord, especially one dedicated to blending units in melee it's decent it improves his WS characteristic by 1.

The friendly Cryptek Hero WL with a Relic. Take a chronometron. Take the Veil of Darkness Relic and the Immortal Pride WL Trait. His Hero traits will be Resilient, Directed Fire, Targeting Augury and Direct Fire.

The less friendly Sautekh Cryptek Hero WL with a Relic. Take a canoptek cloak. Take the Abyssal Staff Relic and the Hyperlogical Strategist WL Trait. His hero traits will be Directed Fire, Targeting Augury and Direct Fire. Normally I'd say Fleet isn't worth it but because you seemed to want a build with it and because Crypteks are starved for good options we'll give him Fleet to add 2" to his Movement characteristic.

The Knight-killer (being a bit optimistic here) Transcendent C'tan Hero with Entropic Touch from the Fractured Personality table and the Antimatter Meteor and Transdimensional Thunderbolt powers of the C'tan. His Hero traits will be Divine Protection for himself, Heirloom and Finely Balanced for his crackling tentacles. He'll also have Brutal for his Crackling Tentacles which is rarely good, but for a dedicated Knight hunter at S7, it's priceless. It lets him pick one of this model’s melee weapons. Improve that weapon’s Strength characteristic by 1 (e.g. User becomes +1, +1 becomes +2).

thank you very much for taking the time and effort to make your post. i do like the friendly sautekh cryptek build you posted. Why the staff and not the weave for extra T and wound or lightning field with the hero trait to add +1 to invul save so it has a 3++ all the time?

Also assuming i'm going helper surfer cryptek, which do you think are better for "fast" harrasment praetorians or tomb blades? I'm thinking tomb blades with gauss, shadowloom with the tek with them for +1 RP and Targeting Augury, Directed Fire

T c'tan is out for being my hero just because of how expensive PL wise he is and i can't even make a simple patrol with him.

Oberron wrote:
thank you very much for taking the time and effort to make your post. i do like the friendly sautekh cryptek build you posted. Why the staff and not the weave for extra T and wound or lightning field with the hero trait to add +1 to invul save so it has a 3++ all the time?

Also assuming i'm going helper surfer cryptek, which do you think are better for "fast" harrasment praetorians or tomb blades? I'm thinking tomb blades with gauss, shadowloom with the tek with them for +1 RP and Targeting Augury, Directed Fire

T c'tan is out for being my hero just because of how expensive PL wise he is and i can't even make a simple patrol with him.

A Cryptek is going to fold under any serious assault regardless of upgrades, I like to just take my chances and enjoy the increased efficiency and if my opponent has some light sniping ability that's enough to kill a Cryptek without upgraded durability then that's too bad. I feel like it's more likely that lists are on either end of the extreme, either they have no way to target the Cryptek or they have a tonne of ways to target the Cryptek.

Tomb Blades are far stronger than Praetorians. Praetorians don't even benefit from the Hero abilities or from the Cryptek's +1 to RP rolls.

I didn't check whether the T C'tan would be an option, but I'll probably end up copy-pasting the guide somewhere else at some point now I know the system as well which is nice. I was working on pts costs for all the upgrades but it's a nightmare to try and balance.

In anticipation that CA2019 will include point adjustments for Necron units, are there any units folks are currently not fielding competitively for which a <10% point reduction would shuffle them to ‘Playable’?

sieGermans wrote:
In anticipation that CA2019 will include point adjustments for Necron units, are there any units folks are currently not fielding competitively for which a <10% point reduction would shuffle them to ‘Playable’?

How about the Tesseract Ark? Or don't we need more than 3 DDA-like units? (it does also sport T7, a 3+ save and 5++, though fewer wounds and weaker cannon)

Still, some sort of change to the core Necron mechanics feels necessary at this point. Slightly cheaper lackluster damage output is still going to be just that.

T Ark drop down to 180 would be nice.

Tesseract Vault coming back down to it's old cost would be nice. Wraiths could do with being slightly cheaper. Warriors down to 10pts might give them some play.

All of our HQs need a drop, but command barges getting a 10-15% drop might make me look at them.

Really we need new rules, not cheaper stuff as you said.

torblind wrote:

sieGermans wrote:
In anticipation that CA2019 will include point adjustments for Necron units, are there any units folks are currently not fielding competitively for which a <10% point reduction would shuffle them to ‘Playable’?

How about the Tesseract Ark? Or don't we need more than 3 DDA-like units? (it does also sport T7, a 3+ save and 5++, though fewer wounds and weaker cannon)

Still, some sort of change to the core Necron mechanics feels necessary at this point. Slightly cheaper lackluster damage output is still going to be just that.

Tier 1 is meta, tier 2 is off-meta but can win against meta lists, tier 3 is bad, tier 4 is terrible. I think units move 0,5-1,5 tiers with a 10% reduction. Things get more complicated with combos, dynasty choice and the weapons you equip your units with, this is mostly assuming top synergy and you not just taking 1 Doom Scythe because it's tier 1 but instead take 3 Doom Scythes to make use of Amalgamated Targeting Data.

Tier 1 units: Destroyers, Tesla Immortals, Tomb Blades, Doom Scythes, Doomsday Arks, Imotekh.
Tier 2 units Annihilation barge, Gauss Pylon, Ghost Arks, Lychguard, most HQ, Scarab Swarms, Seraptek Heavy Construct, Tesseract Ark, Tesseract Vault, Triarch Stalker, Wraiths.
Tier 3 units: C'tan Shards, Gauss Immortals, Heavy Destroyers, Sentry Pylon, Trazyn, Warriors
Tier 4 units: Night Scythe, Tomb Sentinel, Spyder, Triarch Praetorians.

Wraiths are most definitely T2. Much more so than lychguard

No way the craptek big spider thing is tier 2. Lots of LOS blocking terrain is required for this game. Its impossible to move it around the battlefield, unless you have almost no terrain. It cant even move over a simple container. Plus its overcosted ~100 pts. Lychguard arent tier 2 either, more like 3.

 p5freak wrote:
No way the craptek big spider thing is tier 2. Lots of LOS blocking terrain is required for this game. Its impossible to move it around the battlefield, unless you have almost no terrain. It cant even move over a simple container. Plus its overcosted ~100 pts. Lychguard arent tier 2 either, more like 3.

Have you tried the Seraptek Construct? It has topped a tournament and I think the lack of more tops is because of lack of chances more than it being tier 3. It isn't bad and I've personally beat a number of tournament lists with it, although I've lost more games with it than I've won against tournament lists. Running it against the original Loota Bomb and Castellan before its pts increase was definitely a trial by fire IMO.

 Maelstrom808 wrote:
Wraiths are most definitely T2. Much more so than lychguard

Lychguard are seeing a surprising amount of tournament play from the lists I've been researching. Wraiths have fallen out of favour as far as I can see, saying that Wraiths are bad is definitely wrong though. I've moved Wraiths up to T2, but I think we've been sleeping a bit on how good (or at least how not bad) Lychguard are.

IanVanCheese wrote:
T Ark drop down to 180 would be nice.

Tesseract Vault coming back down to it's old cost would be nice. Wraiths could do with being slightly cheaper. Warriors down to 10pts might give them some play.

All of our HQs need a drop, but command barges getting a 10-15% drop might make me look at them.

Really we need new rules, not cheaper stuff as you said.

Exactly, warriors could be 5 points and they would get wrecked by new marines. The faction needs an overhaul. For one, the range band is idiotic. One of the slower factions and they pigeon hole the army at the 24" band lol. It's also mind boggling to me that necrons don't have more deepstrike abilities. They are the faction that warps around with the most ease yet you are forced to play nephrek and burn CP.

Personally, I'd fix the rang issues first. I'd give tesla an AP -1 and ignore cover, otherwise keep it the same barring destructors being 2 damage. Gaus blasters should be assault 2 30" range, gauss canons 36" range, heavy gaus 48" after that the priority would be durability. Vehicles should all be 3+ save and t7. I feel like warriors should be 3+ save and immortals t5. I am on the fence on reanimation protocols. I personally liked the ignore damage more then this getting back up stuff. It's too imbalanced currently, you either get nothing, or the whole unit repairs (usually in casual games) and it's too much. Conceptually it currently doesn't work either, no idea how a fallen immortal from turn 1 returns to the unit on turn 7 way on the other side of the field. Crypteks should have powers from a table again, make them similar to the new chaplain abilities in their execution. The necron lord should cost Much less, like half his current price and be purchasable as 2 per slot like lieutenants. Beyond that theres a lot ot be corrected on garbage slates, but those are the initial tweaks that get the army running properly again.

 vict0988 wrote:

Have you tried the Seraptek Construct? It has topped a tournament and I think the lack of more tops is because of lack of chances more than it being tier 3. It isn't bad and I've personally beat a number of tournament lists with it, although I've lost more games with it than I've won against tournament lists. Running it against the original Loota Bomb and Castellan before its pts increase was definitely a trial by fire IMO.

Wow, it has topped one tournament. What about the other hundred tournaments ? I havent tried it, because i usually play on tables with a good amount of terrain (which is a good thing), moving it around the battlefield wouldnt be possible. The tournament it has topped must have been the no terrain tournament.

It has no base lol. Not sure it would be that hard to move around.

 Red Corsair wrote:
It has no base lol. Not sure it would be that hard to move around.

OMG read the datasheet for it It has a virtual base. To move over a piece of terrain your model must move up vertically, move across it horizontally, then move down again vertically, and lastly move its base size. If the container is 3x3", and the virtual base is 10", the big spider thing has to move 19", to get over the container. Unfortunately it only has 16" move, it must advance, and cant fire its weapons, and cant charge later. 625 pts. for a unit which can only move over an almost terrain free battlefield

Towering Construct: If this model is not placed on a
base, imagine it is on an irregular hexagonal base, with
each of the model’s legs and forelimbs at a corner, as
shown in the diagram below (if a leg/forelimb is not
physically on the ground, that ‘corner’ is the spot on the
ground level directly beneath the tip of the leg/forelimb).
For all rules purposes, this imaginary base counts as
the model’s actual base; you must measure distances to
and from this ‘base’, no other models can move on or
through it, and so on.

https://www.forgeworld.co.uk/resources/PDF/Downloads//Forgeworld_Necron_Seraptek_Datasheet.pdf

Well not much different to knight and those have no trouble moving. And besides wobbly model. If it's still over the terrain piece it still is there. Who says it can't stand there on top of that container? Not the datasheet anyway

It can stand on the container, it just cant move over it, which is ridiculous. Same with a knight. Both have large legs, so they should be able to simply step over it, without losing movement, but they cant.

tneva82 wrote:
Well not much different to knight and those have no trouble moving. And besides wobbly model. If it's still over the terrain piece it still is there. Who says it can't stand there on top of that container? Not the datasheet anyway

Caveat: I have not played with the Seraptek yet.

But I think this is a dispositive point on the movement capabilities of the beast. Knights are clearly competitive enough in the meta and their base is roughly the same size.

Took out pylon first time to game yesterday. Started okay smashing atropos knight in 2 rounds(almost one shotted. Got 3 wounds but 4++ saved 2). Made right call that there would be plenty of super heavies on last round of escalation league with super heavy detachments and air wing detachments finally becoming allowed. Today there were 4 players(me including) playing and either atropos+repulsor+2 helverin army, 2 questor+2 helverin or warhound armies to face Target rich enviroment.

Anyway rest of game it was less than spectacular. Turn 3 nothing, turn 4 finished near dead helverin, turn 5 and 6 nothing. Made me think of actual average damage output vs various targets and number crunched:

T8 3+ W12 9.26
T8 3+ W16 11.48. (btw for repulsor aka +1 to hit it's 13.22 or so)
T8 5++ W24 titanic 14,72.
T8 4++ W24 titanic 12.15.


For doomsday ark:

T8 3+ W12: 5.15
T8 3+ W16 5.34
T8 5++ W24 3.62
T8 4++ W24 2.72

So with price of pylon being 3 dda you can basically triple those for comparison. So pylon wins out clearly vs the knight level guys but loses vs leman russ style targets.

Not sure if this is any use but got curious about it myself.

tneva82 wrote:
Took out pylon first time to game yesterday. Started okay smashing atropos knight in 2 rounds(almost one shotted. Got 3 wounds but 4++ saved 2). Made right call that there would be plenty of super heavies on last round of escalation league with super heavy detachments and air wing detachments finally becoming allowed. Today there were 4 players(me including) playing and either atropos+repulsor+2 helverin army, 2 questor+2 helverin or warhound armies to face Target rich enviroment.

Anyway rest of game it was less than spectacular. Turn 3 nothing, turn 4 finished near dead helverin, turn 5 and 6 nothing. Made me think of actual average damage output vs various targets and number crunched:

T8 3+ W12 9.26
T8 3+ W16 11.48. (btw for repulsor aka +1 to hit it's 13.22 or so)
T8 5++ W24 titanic 14,72.
T8 4++ W24 titanic 12.15.


For doomsday ark:

T8 3+ W12: 5.15
T8 3+ W16 5.34
T8 5++ W24 3.62
T8 4++ W24 2.72

So with price of pylon being 3 dda you can basically triple those for comparison. So pylon wins out clearly vs the knight level guys but loses vs leman russ style targets.

Not sure if this is any use but got curious about it myself.

Good maths. It's worth noting the benefits of Pylon vs flyers too. it'll out perform DDAs there I would have thought. Still, interesting stuff. I think they work best together tbh, especially as the pylon can give the DDAs a 5++

sieGermans wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well not much different to knight and those have no trouble moving. And besides wobbly model. If it's still over the terrain piece it still is there. Who says it can't stand there on top of that container? Not the datasheet anyway

Caveat: I have not played with the Seraptek yet.

But I think this is a dispositive point on the movement capabilities of the beast. Knights are clearly competitive enough in the meta and their base is roughly the same size.

Except that knights have warlord traits, stratagems, relics, household traditions, to help them mitigate their disadvantages, which the big spider things hasnt. In addition, knights are cheaper.

 p5freak wrote:

sieGermans wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Well not much different to knight and those have no trouble moving. And besides wobbly model. If it's still over the terrain piece it still is there. Who says it can't stand there on top of that container? Not the datasheet anyway

Caveat: I have not played with the Seraptek yet.

But I think this is a dispositive point on the movement capabilities of the beast. Knights are clearly competitive enough in the meta and their base is roughly the same size.

Except that knights have warlord traits, stratagems, relics, household traditions, to help them mitigate their disadvantages, which the big spider things hasnt. In addition, knights are cheaper.

I've played the Seraptek a good bit. Honestly the thing has good firepower. Tends to be on the squishy side for a knight i feel, and is definitely a little overpriced. Dropping it 50-75 points would be reasonable.

On the plus side,

The firepower it puts out is excellent. Its weapons have good range if you want to keep it away from the Mortarions, Knights Galant/Rampagers of the world.
It is an excellent melee combatant, capable of dropping a full health knight in a round of combat if your dice roll average, or you use a command reroll.
It actually GETS its invuln save in melee
It is really, really fast when it has room to move (i've never had movement issues on an ITC-style terrain setup as long as its on a flank, and not in between)
As a vehicle it can still benefit from damage control override stratagem to be full effectiveness
It has the Dynasty Keyword, so it can benefit from various stratagems like Methodical Destruction, Blood Rites, or Reclaim a Lost Empire (Which improves its Invuln Save as well as armor save)

IanVanCheese wrote:

Good maths. It's worth noting the benefits of Pylon vs flyers too. it'll out perform DDAs there I would have thought. Still, interesting stuff. I think they work best together tbh, especially as the pylon can give the DDAs a 5++

Yep -1 and -2 to hit will help pylon. I'll do later that as well.

Another thing i checked. Vs t8 3+ pylon does 0 damage about 13% times. That's why it's only 9.26 vs w12 when in vacuum it's bit under 16. those 0's drag average down and when you cause the 32 damage shot 20 of those gets wasted on overkill(so that's basically 0+12 resulting average of 6 etc etc etc.).

Potential damage is huge but overkill reduces real average as targets survive unscathed or still alive quite often.

tneva82 wrote:

IanVanCheese wrote:

Good maths. It's worth noting the benefits of Pylon vs flyers too. it'll out perform DDAs there I would have thought. Still, interesting stuff. I think they work best together tbh, especially as the pylon can give the DDAs a 5++

Yep -1 and -2 to hit will help pylon. I'll do later that as well.

Another thing i checked. Vs t8 3+ pylon does 0 damage about 13% times. That's why it's only 9.26 vs w12 when in vacuum it's bit under 16. those 0's drag average down and when you cause the 32 damage shot 20 of those gets wasted on overkill(so that's basically 0+12 resulting average of 6 etc etc etc.).

Potential damage is huge but overkill reduces real average as targets survive unscathed or still alive quite often.

Yeah really the pylon is only making it's points back vs titanics or big flyers. But it will tank a lot of fire, especially if you can get reclaim the lost empire off. Plus I think it has utility and it's the only way to give our vehicles an inv, which helps because their saves are pants. Might even be funny to deepstrike one in with a load of monoliths to give them 5++. Not competitive, but funny.

 p5freak wrote:
It can stand on the container, it just cant move over it, which is ridiculous. Same with a knight. Both have large legs, so they should be able to simply step over it, without losing movement, but they cant.

It's only marginally wider then several tanks that see play, if your playing on a table with so much scatter terrain that large models without fly cannot move between larger terrain features then that's a problem with your table. 100% it's your table. I play with a ton of terrain and while it limits movement paths, I have never had a model not able to cross the table.

I agree, it is silly and sucks that you can't charge models in a level, but claiming this thing is going to be trapped entirely from moving up the table is stupid. It's literally no different then a gallant. Well except it is a gallant and a crusader rolled into one model. I actually think the seraptek is very valid as a decoy unit, it's not really competitive but neither is anything in our army at the moment. So with that context you kind of need to use what you got.

IanVanCheese wrote:

Yeah really the pylon is only making it's points back vs titanics or big flyers. But it will tank a lot of fire, especially if you can get reclaim the lost empire off. Plus I think it has utility and it's the only way to give our vehicles an inv, which helps because their saves are pants. Might even be funny to deepstrike one in with a load of monoliths to give them 5++. Not competitive, but funny.

Yep. Btw elsewhere i was said damage vs baneblade looks underwhelming as he's often one shotting. So minding i did not calculate cp reroll(which helps pylon more than dda) here's simple math showing simplified what happens with my math and why average is tad under 20.

So t8, 3+ titanic 24 wounds. About 13% odds of zero damage. So from 100 tries 13 times 0 and 87 times result. I simplify that it one shots target. So 87 times 24 damage. It's irrelevant do i cause 24(minimum needed to one shot) or 108(absolute maximum pylon can do). This is 2175. So divide that by 100 and you get 21.75 average damage with overkill removed(whole point of math was to get rid of meaningless overkill inflating average).

Rest of difference comes from that zero damage odds being 13.xx and some of the other times(like when you get 1 hit or like 2 hits but roll one 1 to wound) you cause 14, 16 or 18 damage dragging average down.

So while average result is dead baneblade(3.5 shots, hit on 3, wound on 2 and need 2 successes) average damage still bit under 20. Tomorrow i'll calculate odds of one shots as well

I’ve been playing a flavorful ‘All Canoptek’ List recently, which has given me an opportunity to play with some little-used units/models and to consider some re-grades on existing models from the Front Page. I do want to say that I’m enjoying the heck out of playing these, even the horrible ones, and for casual play these have a very engaging play style!

Therefore, all of the below relates to Competitive and Casually Semi-Serious metas.

Scarabs were A+ at the point of Codex release: Turn-1 deep striking was ubiquitous and they did a great job denying terrain for this, and CC armies were incredibly common meaning bubble wrapping was more essential. In the modern shooty meta where DSing is delayed a turn, they are no longer auto-include material. I suggest reducing to A.

Spyders were D; but I think this was based on recollections of their necessity in 7th Ed. These are solid F material.
-Scarab units pop entirely when targeted now by the ever-present Plasma/D2 weapons everywhere, so the scarab farm functionality is frequently unused.
-Vehicle repairing assumes they are nearby, but more importantly, the d3 repair is incredibly underwhelming for the 50 point investment.
-Psychic denial is only really achievable if the Spyders are pushed forward (potentially out of range of our vehicles) into the red zone midfield. 55 points for incredibly vulnerable and unreliable Psychic Denial is too expensive as a “counter”.

I can confirm that Acanthrites and Tomb Stalkers should remain D; though this is largely point cost driven. Both would need more than a mere 10% drop in cost to be playable, so they are unlikely to be seen in any competitive meta in this edition.

sieGermans wrote:
I’ve been playing a flavorful ‘All Canoptek’ List recently, which has given me an opportunity to play with some little-used units/models and to consider some re-grades on existing models from the Front Page. I do want to say that I’m enjoying the heck out of playing these, even the horrible ones, and for casual play these have a very engaging play style!

Therefore, all of the below relates to Competitive and Casually Semi-Serious metas.

Scarabs were A+ at the point of Codex release: Turn-1 deep striking was ubiquitous and they did a great job denying terrain for this, and CC armies were incredibly common meaning bubble wrapping was more essential. In the modern shooty meta where DSing is delayed a turn, they are no longer auto-include material. I suggest reducing to A.

Spyders were D; but I think this was based on recollections of their necessity in 7th Ed. These are solid F material.
-Scarab units pop entirely when targeted now by the ever-present Plasma/D2 weapons everywhere, so the scarab farm functionality is frequently unused.
-Vehicle repairing assumes they are nearby, but more importantly, the d3 repair is incredibly underwhelming for the 50 point investment.
-Psychic denial is only really achievable if the Spyders are pushed forward (potentially out of range of our vehicles) into the red zone midfield. 55 points for incredibly vulnerable and unreliable Psychic Denial is too expensive as a “counter”.

I can confirm that Acanthrites and Tomb Stalkers should remain D; though this is largely point cost driven. Both would need more than a mere 10% drop in cost to be playable, so they are unlikely to be seen in any competitive meta in this edition.

Spyders are 65 base, not 50 or 45. If you think they are F at 50 then I'd be a bit worried about them becoming anything better than D with CA19.

Point cost was going from memory. I think 7th Ed they were 50? Or I’m mad!

sieGermans wrote:
Point cost was going from memory. I think 7th Ed they were 50? Or I’m mad!

Yeah and they were part of an amazing Formation that effectively gave them 6 wounds, they are the only Monster AFAIK that effectively went down in wounds from 7th to 8th.

Spyders having 4 wounds is one of the strangest design choices. That said, so are most of the design choices in the necron book. Scarabs having 3 wounds, when 4 are on the standard base? Lol, TranC'tan only being t7 with 4 attacks? *facepalm*

I just want Nihilakh to be redone. Imagine getting that trait for an army that wants to frickin move and most of their guns being 24".

Yeah, GW really didn't think that one through.
All of the traits should probably be reworked, really, and the translocation crypt should not be faction locked.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Spyders having 4 wounds is one of the strangest design choices. That said, so are most of the design choices in the necron book. Scarabs having 3 wounds, when 4 are on the standard base? Lol, TranC'tan only being t7 with 4 attacks? *facepalm*

Scarabs have 3 wounds because they have always had 3 wounds. Its just GW copy pasting from earlier editions.

Scarabs having 4 wounds should have been default for sure.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, GW really didn't think that one through.
All of the traits should probably be reworked, really, and the translocation crypt should not be faction locked.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Spyders having 4 wounds is one of the strangest design choices. That said, so are most of the design choices in the necron book. Scarabs having 3 wounds, when 4 are on the standard base? Lol, TranC'tan only being t7 with 4 attacks? *facepalm*

Scarabs have 3 wounds because they have always had 3 wounds. Its just GW copy pasting from earlier editions.

Not always, in 2nd and 3rd edition (pre-codex) they were individual models with only 1 wound.

 necrontyrOG wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Yeah, GW really didn't think that one through.
All of the traits should probably be reworked, really, and the translocation crypt should not be faction locked.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Spyders having 4 wounds is one of the strangest design choices. That said, so are most of the design choices in the necron book. Scarabs having 3 wounds, when 4 are on the standard base? Lol, TranC'tan only being t7 with 4 attacks? *facepalm*

Scarabs have 3 wounds because they have always had 3 wounds. Its just GW copy pasting from earlier editions.

Not always, in 2nd and 3rd edition (pre-codex) they were individual models with only 1 wound.

Huh, that's curious. Were they still swarms? Or have some sort of damage mitigation?

Believe it or not they were "jetbikes" and didn't even come with bases. You could turbo boost bikes for speed back then, so they would fly up to tanks and hook on and explode.

 Red Corsair wrote:
Believe it or not they were "jetbikes" and didn't even come with bases. You could turbo boost bikes for speed back then, so they would fly up to tanks and hook on and explode.

Grandpa Red Corsair comin’ at us with some stories from days gone by!

No bases, or anything. S and T 3, could explode at I10 for a S3+2d6.
You can see them in front of the picture here:

sieGermans wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:
Believe it or not they were "jetbikes" and didn't even come with bases. You could turbo boost bikes for speed back then, so they would fly up to tanks and hook on and explode.

Grandpa Red Corsair comin’ at us with some stories from days gone by!

LOL I mean I am getting grey hair but I am only 34, I just started young

Ah, Raiders!
I tried putting together a pure old school Raiders list, the models are hard to find!
I only managed to get 6 of the old lawn chair Destroyers. Its weird to see Destroyers on small flying bases!
In a perfect world, I'd have a full Necron Raiders army,,
Lord
Immortals
Warriors
Scarabs (one per base, to fit modern rules)
Destroyers
I think that was the entire faction back then.

Scarabs had an insane T value too didn't they? That's what I've been told anyway.

Blndmage wrote:Ah, Raiders!
I tried putting together a pure old school Raiders list, the models are hard to find!
I only managed to get 6 of the old lawn chair Destroyers. Its weird to see Destroyers on small flying bases!
In a perfect world, I'd have a full Necron Raiders army,,
Lord
Immortals
Warriors
Scarabs (one per base, to fit modern rules)
Destroyers
I think that was the entire faction back then.

My whole army is the old school metals, sans vehicles of course. I'm around 5,000 pts or so.

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Scarabs had an insane T value too didn't they? That's what I've been told anyway.

The second edition rules ones did, to represent how small and hard to hit they were.

 necrontyrOG wrote:

Blndmage wrote:Ah, Raiders!
I tried putting together a pure old school Raiders list, the models are hard to find!
I only managed to get 6 of the old lawn chair Destroyers. Its weird to see Destroyers on small flying bases!
In a perfect world, I'd have a full Necron Raiders army,,
Lord
Immortals
Warriors
Scarabs (one per base, to fit modern rules)
Destroyers
I think that was the entire faction back then.

My whole army is the old school metals, sans vehicles of course. I'm around 5,000 pts or so.

I'm so jealous!

Raiders and first launch stuff was what drew me to the army. I started in 4th.
I assume you've got a MASSIVE Silver Tide force!
The Scarabs, if run one to a base, feel a lot like the old ones, with the Self Destruct Stratagem.
I'm a massive fan of the old metal Wraiths, Spyders, Lords, and Flayed Ones.

Thematically I'm running a 'predynastic' Tombworld in the first stages of awakening.
As many Scarabs, and Spyders as I can run.

 necrontyrOG wrote:

Slayer-Fan123 wrote:Scarabs had an insane T value too didn't they? That's what I've been told anyway.

The second edition rules ones did, to represent how small and hard to hit they were.

Yeah that makes sense. I was wondering how scarabs stayed alive if they were one wound models that the opponent would want to gun down quickly due to their kamikaze ability.

Well being multiple one wound models actually help when opponent can overkill. As it is if it was possible apart any unit you aren't planning on buffing with stratagems etc would benefit from running as individual models rather than combined unit.

Also being tiny as hell helps. You don't need all that large piece of terrain to hide behind...

tneva82 wrote:
Well being multiple one wound models actually help when opponent can overkill. As it is if it was possible apart any unit you aren't planning on buffing with stratagems etc would benefit from running as individual models rather than combined unit.

Also being tiny as hell helps. You don't need all that large piece of terrain to hide behind...

Especially on multi-level ruins, you need less than half an inch to hide a unit of Scarabs from an Infantry unit on the ground.

For someone who want to be in the Necron club, where i need to start if i want to build a small army around the Necron Tesseract Ark???

Apart from ark overlord or two, 0-1 cryptek, 25-30 immortals and couple doomsday arks is the boring but effective answer. If you still have points destroyers are good as well.

 hellpato wrote:
For someone who want to be in the Necron club, where i need to start if i want to build a small army around the Necron Tesseract Ark???

Cryptek with Canoptek cloak, 1x3+ Tomb Blades. 2x3 Scarab Swarms, 1 Tesseract Ark.

Combine the two Scarab Squads, fill out the Tomb Blade unit such yhat you have 1x9 get 2 Doomsday Arks +1 Ghost Ark and magnetize it so it can be used as a third DDA later.

Replace Ghost Ark with Doomsday Ark and get 3 Doom Scythes.

Get Gauss Pylon.

500 - 1000 - 1500 - 2000 pts. Subject to change when CA19 comes out.

 hellpato wrote:
For someone who want to be in the Necron club, where i need to start if i want to build a small army around the Necron Tesseract Ark???

Do you mean Tesseract Ark (the forge world thing) or Tesseract Vault (the plastic titanic)?

IanVanCheese wrote:

 hellpato wrote:
For someone who want to be in the Necron club, where i need to start if i want to build a small army around the Necron Tesseract Ark???

Do you mean Tesseract Ark (the forge world thing) or Tesseract Vault (the plastic titanic)?

The Tesseract Ark (FW). I'm trying to build a small fun army when your opponent will said WFT because i only think at the same standard necron army

 hellpato wrote:

IanVanCheese wrote:

 hellpato wrote:
For someone who want to be in the Necron club, where i need to start if i want to build a small army around the Necron Tesseract Ark???

Do you mean Tesseract Ark (the forge world thing) or Tesseract Vault (the plastic titanic)?

The Tesseract Ark (FW). I'm trying to build a small fun army when your opponent will said WFT because i only think at the same standard necron army

Actually saw a very good list that uses the current 3x Doomsday arks/3x Dooms scythes and 3x Tesseract Arks. It ended up getting 2nd place at a RTT that was heavy on the Chaos Knights.

Spearhead Detachment
Dynasty: Sautekh

Cryptek: Artefact: The Veil of Darkness, Canoptek Cloak, Staff of Light
Warlord: Warlord Trait (Sautekh): Hyperlogical Strategist

6x Destroyer: 6x Gauss Cannon

3x Tesseract Ark: Gauss Cannon

Air Wing Detachment
Dynasty: Sautekh

3x Doom Scythe

Spearhead Detachment
Dynasty: Nihilakh

Cryptek: Canoptek Cloak, Staff of Light

3x Doomsday Ark

[130 PL, 6CP, 2,000pts]
This list of course has issues outside of the Knight Meta, but is strong enough to hold it's own.

As soon as the Imp Fists join in the meta the Doom 6 are done. After CA 2019 we will need to do something different to hang in there.

Pyrothem wrote:
As soon as the Imp Fists join in the meta the Doom 6 are done. After CA 2019 we will need to do something different to hang in there.

We don't get any lists nearly as viable without 3+ vehicles, it might just have to be a 20% win-rate matchup, but even if you find a 60% WR list against IF you will most likely lose a major chunk of win-rate against other factions. Melee is next to hopeless when a TFC can halve the movement of two units. I can't see LG or Wraith spam working for that reason. Destroyer spam could replace vehicles, I don't think it'll be worth it.

 vict0988 wrote:

Pyrothem wrote:
As soon as the Imp Fists join in the meta the Doom 6 are done. After CA 2019 we will need to do something different to hang in there.

We don't get any lists nearly as viable without 3+ vehicles, it might just have to be a 20% win-rate matchup, but even if you find a 60% WR list against IF you will most likely lose a major chunk of win-rate against other factions. Melee is next to hopeless when a TFC can halve the movement of two units. I can't see LG or Wraith spam working for that reason. Destroyer spam could replace vehicles, I don't think it'll be worth it.

Like anything, it will take a mix. One thing is for sure though, immortals have been dropping like flies in my list. I used to run at least 2x10 telsa immortals but I am finding myself more and more likely to just take min squads now.

I have found success with the opposite. I run 30 to 40 immortals with imo/overlord support. If taken in small numbers, such as 20, they haven't the critical mass of fire to clear the field of any poor slob who moved infantry within '24 of that ruin.

With 40 on the field, all tesla on 5s or 4s, things die. It also makes your Imo/over combo more points efficient, as 4 squads is the most efficient use of the orders coming out of that combo.

I usually do not invest into improving res prots or giving them an invuln. A battalion of 30 to 40 MWBD immortals lives not by saves, but by being the most efficient choice for walking through a ruin wall and killing everything withing 24 on the other side.

Ugh...feel like I got hit by a truck today. I didn't run my most competitive list ever, was told it was a friendly scenario game.

Squared off against my buddy's new Iron Hands.
Iron Father...Sniper Rifles everywhere, 2 invictor warsuits.

After losing the roll off to go first despite the +1 to the roll, and failing to seize, those invictor warsuits walk up an inch away from me, and I lose 20 fearless warriors, and 9 of 10 of my immortals, (All in a chronometron bubble) and a squad of tomb blades too...

I managed to drag things out into a game, which had to end on time at the bottom of turn 3. Only thing keeping me in the game was Nihilakh doomsday arks rolling 6s for their shot numbers like champs and a squad of Lychguard with sword and board body guarding my lord, overlord, and cryptek with/chrono. Soaked up a lot of damage from the sniper rifles and then speed bumped and ground their way through an ironclad character, and 10 intercessors.
Niche, but they did a good job.

Now my point

How the frak is there any counter-play to those stupid warsuits, and Iron Hands in general?
The whole army just sits in dev doctrine all game, functionally ignoring cover with the bonus AP, and rerolls everywhere.
I knew from the reviews it was rough, but SHEESH.

 DogHeadGod wrote:
I have found success with the opposite. I run 30 to 40 immortals with imo/overlord support. If taken in small numbers, such as 20, they haven't the critical mass of fire to clear the field of any poor slob who moved infantry within '24 of that ruin.

With 40 on the field, all tesla on 5s or 4s, things die. It also makes your Imo/over combo more points efficient, as 4 squads is the most efficient use of the orders coming out of that combo.

I usually do not invest into improving res prots or giving them an invuln. A battalion of 30 to 40 MWBD immortals lives not by saves, but by being the most efficient choice for walking through a ruin wall and killing everything withing 24 on the other side.

I just find tesla is irrelevant verse primaris though, especially if they are using stealth trait or sitting in actual cover. 10 tesla immortals with MWBD only kills an intercessor and wounds a second if they are in cover. I wouldn't consider that great. I still like them, don't get me wrong, but they die twice as fast in return. It gets even more silly when you factor in the additional AP they get for doctrines. I think Necrons will be in a better spot after CA19, the army won't ever function on a high level until it gets a rewrite, but at least we can squeeze a few more guns into a list with a point cut. 8th is kind of in a bad place ATM though, the game is way too lethal and the supplements opened Pandora's box, there isn't an elegant fix to those. Should be an interesting year, I am betting there is a core rule update sometime next year. But thats just speculation.

 Red Corsair wrote:

I just find tesla is irrelevant verse primaris though, especially if they are using stealth trait or sitting in actual cover. 10 tesla immortals with MWBD only kills an intercessor and wounds a second if they are in cover. I wouldn't consider that great. I still like them, don't get me wrong, but they die twice as fast in return. It gets even more silly when you factor in the additional AP they get for doctrines. I think Necrons will be in a better spot after CA19, the army won't ever function on a high level until it gets a rewrite, but at least we can squeeze a few more guns into a list with a point cut. 8th is kind of in a bad place ATM though, the game is way too lethal and the supplements opened Pandora's box, there isn't an elegant fix to those. Should be an interesting year, I am betting there is a core rule update sometime next year. But thats just speculation.

You do know there is a stratagem which removes the benefit of cover ? And tomb blades can use nebuloscopes, no bonus for cover.

 Red Corsair wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Pyrothem wrote:
As soon as the Imp Fists join in the meta the Doom 6 are done. After CA 2019 we will need to do something different to hang in there.

We don't get any lists nearly as viable without 3+ vehicles, it might just have to be a 20% win-rate matchup, but even if you find a 60% WR list against IF you will most likely lose a major chunk of win-rate against other factions. Melee is next to hopeless when a TFC can halve the movement of two units. I can't see LG or Wraith spam working for that reason. Destroyer spam could replace vehicles, I don't think it'll be worth it.

Like anything, it will take a mix. One thing is for sure though, immortals have been dropping like flies in my list. I used to run at least 2x10 telsa immortals but I am finding myself more and more likely to just take min squads now.

I've run 58 Tesla Immortals twice against IH, won both times through objectives by pressuring my opponent, staying out of LOS and taking objectives. I tried running 18 Wraiths against IH and I got destroyed because trying to kill things with Wraiths requires them to get into melee.

 iGuy91 wrote:
Ugh...feel like I got hit by a truck today. I didn't run my most competitive list ever, was told it was a friendly scenario game.

Squared off against my buddy's new Iron Hands.
Iron Father...Sniper Rifles everywhere, 2 invictor warsuits.

Sounds like you need to have a talk with your opponent about what constitutes a friendly scenario.

How the frak is there any counter-play to those stupid warsuits, and Iron Hands in general?
The whole army just sits in dev doctrine all game, functionally ignoring cover with the bonus AP, and rerolls everywhere.
I knew from the reviews it was rough, but SHEESH.

Just shoot them, they don't have an invuln. If you'd gone first you would have destroyed at least one, pretty likely both of them depending on exactly how friendly your army was and deployment. A friendly army getting annihilated by a competitive army isn't anything new, the same thing would happen if you played against competitive Knights or Craftworlds most likely. I don't know what I'm hoping for with CA19, I don't want to be too optimistic, I'd prefer if SM got nerfed but TF Stratagems, Combat Doctrines, IH and successors probably won't be touched before spring FAQ 2020, pts most likely won't be changed until CA20 as they wait and see what impacts any buffs they implement in CA19 has and any nerfs they implement to rules in Spring. Combat Doctrines was implemented quite badly, how it could be anything but obvious that you'd sit in one Doctrine all game when you can build your army around one Doctrine instead of three and you get an additional bonus for doing so is pure GW. I get so mad when Podcasters say that it's fluffy, nope, I find the lack of IH Reivers/Assault Marines very unfluffy. I'm still waiting for them to show up. Any day now.

Here's a question. If CA19 gives us another points drop on warriors, down to 10 pts a model (or even 9pts), would warrior spam become our best bet at dealing with the current meta?

Warriors can still batter space marine infantry around. We have no way to out kill marines and that's not going to change, but would a slight drop in pts for warriors give us a way to outlast them?

If not, what else can we try? QS spam?

 vict0988 wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
Ugh...feel like I got hit by a truck today. I didn't run my most competitive list ever, was told it was a friendly scenario game.

Squared off against my buddy's new Iron Hands.
Iron Father...Sniper Rifles everywhere, 2 invictor warsuits.

Sounds like you need to have a talk with your opponent about what constitutes a friendly scenario.

Probably his opponent was just as surprised by his army’s effectiveness. It takes a while, even for honest brokers, to be able to tell how good their own lists actually are.

 p5freak wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

I just find tesla is irrelevant verse primaris though, especially if they are using stealth trait or sitting in actual cover. 10 tesla immortals with MWBD only kills an intercessor and wounds a second if they are in cover. I wouldn't consider that great. I still like them, don't get me wrong, but they die twice as fast in return. It gets even more silly when you factor in the additional AP they get for doctrines. I think Necrons will be in a better spot after CA19, the army won't ever function on a high level until it gets a rewrite, but at least we can squeeze a few more guns into a list with a point cut. 8th is kind of in a bad place ATM though, the game is way too lethal and the supplements opened Pandora's box, there isn't an elegant fix to those. Should be an interesting year, I am betting there is a core rule update sometime next year. But thats just speculation.

You do know there is a stratagem which removes the benefit of cover ? And tomb blades can use nebuloscopes, no bonus for cover.

Yea and I also actually play the game enough to know that doesn't fix it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Pyrothem wrote:
As soon as the Imp Fists join in the meta the Doom 6 are done. After CA 2019 we will need to do something different to hang in there.

We don't get any lists nearly as viable without 3+ vehicles, it might just have to be a 20% win-rate matchup, but even if you find a 60% WR list against IF you will most likely lose a major chunk of win-rate against other factions. Melee is next to hopeless when a TFC can halve the movement of two units. I can't see LG or Wraith spam working for that reason. Destroyer spam could replace vehicles, I don't think it'll be worth it.

Like anything, it will take a mix. One thing is for sure though, immortals have been dropping like flies in my list. I used to run at least 2x10 telsa immortals but I am finding myself more and more likely to just take min squads now.

I've run 58 Tesla Immortals twice against IH, won both times through objectives by pressuring my opponent, staying out of LOS and taking objectives. I tried running 18 Wraiths against IH and I got destroyed because trying to kill things with Wraiths requires them to get into melee.

Well not to be dismissive, but you simply saying you ran 60 immortals verse some dude and won, with zero context doesn't really encourage me. I would enjoy a discussion though if you feel like sharing a few more details when you have the time. My best guess is your just bridging the gap with player skill and/or the other guy was running a toned down list. There are plenty of things that scrub immortals without batting an eye. Iron hands are OK, but their are a lot of other traits and builds out there and I am not sure I can believe you can consistently hide 58 models on 32mm bases from an army with some of the best fliers in the game and thunderfire canons. Realistically you would lose all your infantry in ~2 turns verse that bullsh!t and that's not a slight at you, it's just how silly the new marine supplements are. But I would like to know more details, sounds interesting.

I never even mentioned wraiths BTW, nothing in the necron combat section is even remotely worth running unless your playing a friendly game. That we can agree on up front.

Look at 40 immortals as board control and intense threat to anything 4 tough or less. To be honest, I deal with bigger threats by linking 2 squads to fire at the same target. I do run this competitively, and it works as a solid ITC board control core battalion with strong threat upsides. Run it Imo/Over. I support ot with 3 DDAs, and am playing with concepts on the remaining points after permanently shitcanning the dscythes. Current plan is 3 gauss Tessie Arks.

IanVanCheese wrote:
Here's a question. If CA19 gives us another points drop on warriors, down to 10 pts a model (or even 9pts), would warrior spam become our best bet at dealing with the current meta?

Warriors can still batter space marine infantry around. We have no way to out kill marines and that's not going to change, but would a slight drop in pts for warriors give us a way to outlast them?

If not, what else can we try? QS spam?

In my opinion, not likely. Space Marines have become the killers of Horde Armies and Necron Warriors would suffer the same fate. Those Thunder Fire Cannons and Intercessors on Rapid Fire 2 at 30" means they outrange us and can destroy them quite easily. I think our best units against them would be Wraiths, Destroyers, Doomsday Arks and maybe the 3 Doom Scythes. We need to play more of the Elite variant of Necrons, hordes just get wiped off the table.

We'll see what CA brings. Nothing can fix us, but maybe it'll nerf everything else into the ground, bring them down to our level.

In the meantime, I guess I have some space marines to get painted.

So have you guys considered what with all the eliminators, scout snipers and the like in the meta, that lychguard may in fact have a place in a small 5 man squad to bodyguard our key characters?
Being able to transfer the wounds over on a 2+, and turning potential d3 wounds and a mortal wound into a single mortal wound could be good math in our benefit.

Without them, my characters would be cowering all game. What are your thoughts?

sieGermans wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:
Ugh...feel like I got hit by a truck today. I didn't run my most competitive list ever, was told it was a friendly scenario game.

Squared off against my buddy's new Iron Hands.
Iron Father...Sniper Rifles everywhere, 2 invictor warsuits.

Sounds like you need to have a talk with your opponent about what constitutes a friendly scenario.

Probably his opponent was just as surprised by his army’s effectiveness. It takes a while, even for honest brokers, to be able to tell how good their own lists actually are.

That'd go with SoB, Necrons or GK, not Iron Hands. You should assume your list is competitive when you play a tier 0 faction, if you can't stand up to your local competitive meta you get to downgrade it to a casual list. A deliberately terrible list can be counted as casual as well. Like Necrons in 7th, compared to Decurion taking a CAD was terrible, so any CAD list was most likely okay in casual games. Maybe if the IH player ran multiple units of Sternguard in Drop Pods or at least a unit of Terminators or Assault Marines.

 Red Corsair wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Red Corsair wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Pyrothem wrote:
As soon as the Imp Fists join in the meta the Doom 6 are done. After CA 2019 we will need to do something different to hang in there.

We don't get any lists nearly as viable without 3+ vehicles, it might just have to be a 20% win-rate matchup, but even if you find a 60% WR list against IF you will most likely lose a major chunk of win-rate against other factions. Melee is next to hopeless when a TFC can halve the movement of two units. I can't see LG or Wraith spam working for that reason. Destroyer spam could replace vehicles, I don't think it'll be worth it.

Like anything, it will take a mix. One thing is for sure though, immortals have been dropping like flies in my list. I used to run at least 2x10 telsa immortals but I am finding myself more and more likely to just take min squads now.

I've run 58 Tesla Immortals twice against IH, won both times through objectives by pressuring my opponent, staying out of LOS and taking objectives. I tried running 18 Wraiths against IH and I got destroyed because trying to kill things with Wraiths requires them to get into melee.

Well not to be dismissive, but you simply saying you ran 60 immortals verse some dude and won, with zero context doesn't really encourage me. I would enjoy a discussion though if you feel like sharing a few more details when you have the time. My best guess is your just bridging the gap with player skill and/or the other guy was running a toned down list. There are plenty of things that scrub immortals without batting an eye. Iron hands are OK, but their are a lot of other traits and builds out there and I am not sure I can believe you can consistently hide 58 models on 32mm bases from an army with some of the best fliers in the game and thunderfire canons. Realistically you would lose all your infantry in ~2 turns verse that bullsh!t and that's not a slight at you, it's just how silly the new marine supplements are. But I would like to know more details, sounds interesting.

I never even mentioned wraiths BTW, nothing in the necron combat section is even remotely worth running unless your playing a friendly game. That we can agree on up front.

I didn't mean to say that Immortals are the perfect answer, my opponent misplayed and I misplayed, this isn't tournament statistics and while we were both bringing tournament lists we didn't play at that level. I don't think Immortals should be dismissed though, I was just saying that Wraiths did not feel like a good replacement which theoretically they are. 3+ invul and T5 should be good against AP-2 S4-5, maybe Wraiths are okay but the specific list I brought didn't compare to my usual Immortal spam. Theoretically, complete vehicle spam fails because of IF and Tomb Blades are iffy against the heavy bolt rifles even if you take the invul upgrade.

IanVanCheese wrote:
Here's a question. If CA19 gives us another points drop on warriors, down to 10 pts a model (or even 9pts), would warrior spam become our best bet at dealing with the current meta?

Warriors can still batter space marine infantry around. We have no way to out kill marines and that's not going to change, but would a slight drop in pts for warriors give us a way to outlast them?

If not, what else can we try? QS spam?

Intercessors are very good against Warriors I think, two wounds and the ability to fire twice if they don't move means Warriors would have to be 9 pts to have a chance. Maybe with a Chronometron Cryptek you'd be relatively durable against the heavy bolt rifles and be able to better stand up to Combat Doctrines but Crypteks are IMO overpriced compared to most characters in the game. Warriors become pretty good if you play against lists that can't instantly pop a unit, but Repulsor Executioners and the standard bolt rifle absolutely can. Barring any change in cost for our HQs I think Warriors would need to come down to 8 pts to become popular but I think they'd see a solid amount of play at 9. 10 feels like too much, 11 pt Warriors weren't good against Intercessors before they got beta bolters and I don't think 1 pt cheaper is better than Combat Doctrines, bolter discipline, +1 attack in the first round of combat for Intercessors.

 iGuy91 wrote:
So have you guys considered what with all the eliminators, scout snipers and the like in the meta, that lychguard may in fact have a place in a small 5 man squad to bodyguard our key characters?
Being able to transfer the wounds over on a 2+, and turning potential d3 wounds and a mortal wound into a single mortal wound could be good math in our benefit.

Without them, my characters would be cowering all game. What are your thoughts?

Lychguard Guardian Protocols does not work like Tau Empire Drones Saviour Protocols, your character loses d3+1 wounds and then you get to individually transfer those wounds. That's why Lychguard are bad at being bodyguards and are not worth it in that capacity.

 vict0988 wrote:

Lychguard Guardian Protocols does not work like Tau Empire Drones Saviour Protocols, your character loses d3+1 wounds and then you get to individually transfer those wounds. That's why Lychguard are bad at being bodyguards and are not worth it in that capacity.

What? It doesn't work like that. I just checked the rule, it says that if a character takes a wound roll a D6 - on a 2+ Lychguard takes a mortal wound instead. There's nothing about D3+1.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Lychguard Guardian Protocols does not work like Tau Empire Drones Saviour Protocols, your character loses d3+1 wounds and then you get to individually transfer those wounds. That's why Lychguard are bad at being bodyguards and are not worth it in that capacity.

What? It doesn't work like that. I just checked the rule, it says that if a character takes a wound roll a D6 - on a 2+ Lychguard takes a mortal wound instead. There's nothing about D3+1.

You lose a wound when damage is inflicted. So if you get hit and wounded by a weapon with D3 damage that does an additional 1 mortal wound you get your Sv and then for each damage inflicted the Lychguard can roll a D6, for each 2+ rolled the character takes one less wound and the Lychguard suffer one mortal wound. It's better in some circumstances than Shield Drones (against things with no AP), but against snipers it is worse.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Lychguard Guardian Protocols does not work like Tau Empire Drones Saviour Protocols, your character loses d3+1 wounds and then you get to individually transfer those wounds. That's why Lychguard are bad at being bodyguards and are not worth it in that capacity.

What? It doesn't work like that. I just checked the rule, it says that if a character takes a wound roll a D6 - on a 2+ Lychguard takes a mortal wound instead. There's nothing about D3+1.

Yeah, the wording is just different enough to be confusing. Guardian Protocols is actually closer to Disgustingly Resilient than Savior Protocols.
Guardian Protocols triggers each time the character "loses a wound", so in this case the Lychguard will be taking up to D3+1 mortal wounds, depending on how many 2+ rolls you can make.

trying to make a decent list, not planning for competetive, though the local meta is relatively tough, feedback?

xenoterracide wrote:
trying to make a decent list, not planning for competetive, though the local meta is relatively tough, feedback?

Spoiler:

++ Battalion Detachment +5CP (Necrons) [67 PL, 8CP, 1,174pts] ++

+ No Force Org Slot +

Battle-forged CP [3CP]

Detachment CP [5CP]

Dynasty Choice
. Dynasty: Mephrit

+ HQ +

Cryptek [5 PL, 80pts]: Staff of Light

Overlord [6 PL, 139pts]: Artefact: The Veil of Darkness, Resurrection Orb, Voidscythe

+ Troops +

Immortals [8 PL, 150pts]: 10x Immortal, Tesla Carbine

Immortals [4 PL, 75pts]: Gauss Blaster, 5x Immortal

Necron Warriors [6 PL, 110pts]: 10x Necron Warrior

+ Elites +

Lychguard [8 PL, 140pts]: Hyperphase Sword and Dispersion Shield, 5x Lychguard

+ Heavy Support +

Doomsday Ark [10 PL, 160pts]

Doomsday Ark [10 PL, 160pts]

Doomsday Ark [10 PL, 160pts]

++ Outrider Detachment +1CP (Necrons) [49 PL, 1CP, 819pts] ++

+ No Force Org Slot +

Detachment CP [1CP]

Dynasty Choice
. Dynasty: Mephrit

+ HQ +

Catacomb Command Barge [9 PL, 153pts]: Gauss Cannon, Warlord, Warscythe

+ Fast Attack +

Canoptek Scarabs [4 PL, 78pts]: 6x Canoptek Scarab Swarm

Canoptek Wraiths [18 PL, 288pts]
. 6x Canoptek Wraith

Destroyers [9 PL, 150pts]
. 2x Destroyer: 2x Gauss Cannon
. Heavy Destroyer: Heavy Gauss Cannon

Destroyers [9 PL, 150pts]
. 2x Destroyer: 2x Gauss Cannon
. Heavy Destroyer: Heavy Gauss Cannon

++ Total: [116 PL, 9CP, 1,993pts] ++

Created with BattleScribe

Tesla is the way to go for immortals. Always use a maxed unit of destroyers, no heavy destroyer. Harder to wipe out, better to reanimate. Better for EP. Res orbs arent worth the points. Mephrit is not as good as you might think. Wraith dont benefit from mephrit, and destroyers already have -3.

I wish Spyders were a little tougher. I’ve been running a Novokh Scarab list with cryptek and spyder support and it’s pretty nasty unless they just pop the spyders first. Giving a non character monster the same amount of wounds as a guard commander is a little insulting.

Crimson Haze scarabs are no joke though, they can tear through a lot of targets pretty well.

 p5freak wrote:


Tesla is the way to go for immortals. Always use a maxed unit of destroyers, no heavy destroyer. Harder to wipe out, better to reanimate. Better for EP. Res orbs arent worth the points. Mephrit is not as good as you might think. Wraith dont benefit from mephrit, and destroyers already have -3.

wouldn't mephrit put destroyers at -4 (not looking at my codex atm)? not saying mephrit is great, but... honestly on my wishlist of things would be to increase the range of that ability to be 18 inches so you don't have to be in charge range. What dynasty would you suggest if I'm building my list around the doomsday arks?

xenoterracide wrote:

 p5freak wrote:


Tesla is the way to go for immortals. Always use a maxed unit of destroyers, no heavy destroyer. Harder to wipe out, better to reanimate. Better for EP. Res orbs arent worth the points. Mephrit is not as good as you might think. Wraith dont benefit from mephrit, and destroyers already have -3.

wouldn't mephrit put destroyers at -4 (not looking at my codex atm)? not saying mephrit is great, but... honestly on my wishlist of things would be to increase the range of that ability to be 18 inches so you don't have to be in charge range. What dynasty would you suggest if I'm building my list around the doomsday arks?

Yes, mephrit would put destroyers at -4. But you need to be within 12", thats an easy charge for your opponent. DDAs like nihilakh, when they stand still, they get to re-roll 1s to hit.

xenoterracide wrote:

 p5freak wrote:


Tesla is the way to go for immortals. Always use a maxed unit of destroyers, no heavy destroyer. Harder to wipe out, better to reanimate. Better for EP. Res orbs arent worth the points. Mephrit is not as good as you might think. Wraith dont benefit from mephrit, and destroyers already have -3.

wouldn't mephrit put destroyers at -4 (not looking at my codex atm)? not saying mephrit is great, but... honestly on my wishlist of things would be to increase the range of that ability to be 18 inches so you don't have to be in charge range. What dynasty would you suggest if I'm building my list around the doomsday arks?

And how often you need -4? There's not that many 2+ save WITHOUT inv save. Remember anybody with 5++ ignores -4 already even if they sport 2+ save. And plenty have 4++.

-3 is already more than enough to get you max benefit. Numerous inv saves makes sure -3 is already often enough as good as -2 as it is!

Centurions, often down to a 1+ with no invul.

Yeah so one unit. Good if you know you are facing them for sure. Whatabout all the power you give away when you don't face them? Not to mention you already average 7 wounds with -3. You'll be wiping most of the squad as it is...7.11 wounding hits will do wonders already. Is that 2.37 extra wounding hits REALLY worth being weaker against most other units?

tneva82 wrote:
Yeah so one unit. Good if you know you are facing them for sure. Whatabout all the power you give away when you don't face them? Not to mention you already average 7 wounds with -3. You'll be wiping most of the squad as it is...7.11 wounding hits will do wonders already. Is that 2.37 extra wounding hits REALLY worth being weaker against most other units?

Not advocating Mephrit over Sautekh because Sautekh offers a lot of nice things, but Centurion are played a lot, and successor marines tend to play Stealthy (you only have one Solar Pulse per turn) i could understand the choice. -4 AP tend to become good right now and Primaris Marines don't have a lot invulnerable saves.
Being at 12" is probably too much of a risk for everything, especially Destroyers, though.

Reading immortals and destroyers are good. Should I run more immortals if I have any and run heavy destroyers as destroyers? What about wraiths?

Shaelinith wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
Yeah so one unit. Good if you know you are facing them for sure. Whatabout all the power you give away when you don't face them? Not to mention you already average 7 wounds with -3. You'll be wiping most of the squad as it is...7.11 wounding hits will do wonders already. Is that 2.37 extra wounding hits REALLY worth being weaker against most other units?

Not advocating Mephrit over Sautekh because Sautekh offers a lot of nice things, but Centurion are played a lot, and successor marines tend to play Stealthy (you only have one Solar Pulse per turn) i could understand the choice. -4 AP tend to become good right now and Primaris Marines don't have a lot invulnerable saves.
Being at 12" is probably too much of a risk for everything, especially Destroyers, though.

Maybe. I think you're going to see an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor in most marine armies soon since he doesn't break their doctrines and they're great toolboxes. They can give infantry a 5++ with a power. I know it seems like a bit of a random thought, but they're that good. They'll be in most lists.

I still think sautekh is our best option (of Nephrek to teleport in)

 Badablack wrote:
I wish Spyders were a little tougher. I’ve been running a Novokh Scarab list with cryptek and spyder support and it’s pretty nasty unless they just pop the spyders first. Giving a non character monster the same amount of wounds as a guard commander is a little insulting.

Crimson Haze scarabs are no joke though, they can tear through a lot of targets pretty well.

I run a Novokh Spyder/Scarab list too!
I try and run three Spyders per squad, eats points, but the extra wounds and ability to spread out can be really handy, as well as adding in Particle Projectors.

I tend to run a core of Scarabs surrounding a Crimson Haze Dlord. I deploy the Spyders really aggressive, with the Scarab ball behind, cause the who mess advanced over the Spyders, but I can generally keep them in range of the Hive until they hit CC, then I'll get Spyders in range after a round or so.

The rest of my lists tend to be two x 3 Sentry Pylons with Heat Cannons, and a Cloaktek.

IanVanCheese wrote:
Maybe. I think you're going to see an Ordo Malleus Inquisitor in most marine armies soon since he doesn't break their doctrines and they're great toolboxes. They can give infantry a 5++ with a power. I know it seems like a bit of a random thought, but they're that good. They'll be in most lists.

I still think sautekh is our best option (of Nephrek to teleport in)

It's difficult to adapt to all the new things you can do with Space Marines as they get new rules/combo every week

Guess we will have something in CA19, like ... point reductions ? Yay ...

BillyN831 wrote:
Reading immortals and destroyers are good. Should I run more immortals if I have any and run heavy destroyers as destroyers? What about wraiths?

Immortals are our superior Troops choice, primarily with Telsa Carbines.
Destroyers are glass cannons. But their damage output with 'Extermination Protocols' is exceptional
Wraiths are our best melee choice they are solid.

 iGuy91 wrote:

BillyN831 wrote:
Reading immortals and destroyers are good. Should I run more immortals if I have any and run heavy destroyers as destroyers? What about wraiths?

Immortals are our superior Troops choice, primarily with Telsa Carbines.
Destroyers are glass cannons. But their damage output with 'Extermination Protocols' is exceptional
Wraiths are our best melee choice they are solid.

I would disagree with Wraiths being the best. They are expensive for the job, I have to say. They come with a lot of utility for that cost, but when you get right down to the job they are supposed to be good at, it's not efficient. I'd take Flayed Ones over them in most lists.

 Jancoran wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:

BillyN831 wrote:
Reading immortals and destroyers are good. Should I run more immortals if I have any and run heavy destroyers as destroyers? What about wraiths?

Immortals are our superior Troops choice, primarily with Telsa Carbines.
Destroyers are glass cannons. But their damage output with 'Extermination Protocols' is exceptional
Wraiths are our best melee choice they are solid.

I would disagree with Wraiths being the best. They are expensive for the job, I have to say. They come with a lot of utility for that cost, but when you get right down to the job they are supposed to be good at, it's not efficient. I'd take Flayed Ones over them in most lists.

Flayed ones are awful. Take warriors as your melee units before you go near flayed ones.

But yeah, Wraiths are more of a distraction and nuisance than melee powerhouse.

 Jancoran wrote:
I would disagree with Wraiths being the best. They are expensive for the job, I have to say. They come with a lot of utility for that cost, but when you get right down to the job they are supposed to be good at, it's not efficient. I'd take Flayed Ones over them in most lists.

They might not be good but necron's don't have good cc units and wraiths are best there is. Flayed ones are lol bad. They don't get into combat to begin with. 9" deep strike charges waaaaaay too unreliable(27% yey!) nor do they have even punch.

IanVanCheese wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:

 iGuy91 wrote:

BillyN831 wrote:
Reading immortals and destroyers are good. Should I run more immortals if I have any and run heavy destroyers as destroyers? What about wraiths?

Immortals are our superior Troops choice, primarily with Telsa Carbines.
Destroyers are glass cannons. But their damage output with 'Extermination Protocols' is exceptional
Wraiths are our best melee choice they are solid.

I would disagree with Wraiths being the best. They are expensive for the job, I have to say. They come with a lot of utility for that cost, but when you get right down to the job they are supposed to be good at, it's not efficient. I'd take Flayed Ones over them in most lists.

Flayed ones are awful. Take warriors as your melee units before you go near flayed ones.

But yeah, Wraiths are more of a distraction and nuisance than melee powerhouse.

Warriors? Hmm... No. Lol. I love the production on Flayed Ones. So many synergies possible with them and they will AT LEAST get as close to the enemy as the Wraiths will. Wraiths give enemies an entire turn to negate them (whatever form that may come in). Spamming them is the only answer to THAT issue but then you really start questioning the wisdom, given the need for enough shooting units in the army. So th Wraiths kinda form a vicious circle. UNless you plan to play a nearly entirely melee force, in which case, okay! Suddenly the threat saturation stops them from being as obvious a target. Wraiths best attributes have little to do with them in combat, which is ironic but true. You're paying for everything but combat output in most cases. a 7 attack typically outfitted Nurgle Daemon Prince is slaying 3 a round, and if he gets real lucky... GK's are removing them easily. The new stratagems that can make a damn suppressor good enough to plow a whole squad of Wraiths in one go, albeit they'd need a touch of luck is still scary. Elite things in 8E have lost some lustre.
Simple, regenerative Flayed ones... Now those are the ones I trust to do the down and dirty work. Theyve got their Cryptek to help and maybe Anrakyr along for example. They pounce on you for 80 buffed attacks, re-rolling wounds. That is a level of certainty in damage dealing that you cannot find anywhere else and best of all... It need not be irected at just one unit either. Its a large enough unit to cut a swathye threou a coule important units and click offtheir shooting.

Just saying.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
I would disagree with Wraiths being the best. They are expensive for the job, I have to say. They come with a lot of utility for that cost, but when you get right down to the job they are supposed to be good at, it's not efficient. I'd take Flayed Ones over them in most lists.

They might not be good but necron's don't have good cc units and wraiths are best there is. Flayed ones are lol bad. They don't get into combat to begin with. 9" deep strike charges waaaaaay too unreliable(27% yey!) nor do they have even punch.

Look a lot closer to those synergies. Necrons are all about the Synergies.

 Jancoran wrote:
Warriors? Hmm... No. Lol. I love the production on Flayed Ones. So many synergies possible with them and they will AT LEAST get as close to the enemy as the Wraiths will. Wraiths give enemies an entire turn to negate them

Hide behind terrain, do T1 charge. That's how I do it. I have yet to fail to get them T1 charge. With flayed warriors it's lousy odds of making charge and even if you make it bad damage output.

Look a lot closer to those synergies. Necrons are all about the Synergies.

What synergy? Can't MWBD them. There's no way to boost their AP. There's very little synergy to them. They come out of deepstrike and try that 9" charge(28% odds) and if somehow make it make minor dent and then die.

tneva82 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Warriors? Hmm... No. Lol. I love the production on Flayed Ones. So many synergies possible with them and they will AT LEAST get as close to the enemy as the Wraiths will. Wraiths give enemies an entire turn to negate them

Hide behind terrain, do T1 charge. That's how I do it. I have yet to fail to get them T1 charge. With flayed warriors it's lousy odds of making charge and even if you make it bad damage output.

Look a lot closer to those synergies. Necrons are all about the Synergies.

What synergy? Can't MWBD them. There's no way to boost their AP. There's very little synergy to them. They come out of deepstrike and try that 9" charge(28% odds) and if somehow make it make minor dent and then die.

Yep.

Warriors get to deal 2/3rd of their damage even if they fail the charge because they have guns. Then you can gamble on the charge to finish the job. Flayed Ones have bugger all synergy beyond the Novokh buff. Just stick Anrakyr near the warriors if you want a bit more bite in combat. Warrriors still get RP, they still get buffs from Crpyteks (including the characters who can give them better Str or Attacks. All that and a gun. Flayed Ones blow. They need some AP or another buff. Also a points drop.

Giving them infiltrate and charge after advancing could be fun.
Then you can pull off T1 charges like those warsuits can.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Giving them infiltrate and charge after advancing could be fun.
Then you can pull off T1 charges like those warsuits can.

Yeah they need some new rules. - 1 AP would be nice, but something more flavourful would be good too. Maybe a buff once they wipe a unit out, like Electropriests. Could represent them being in a blood frenzy after a fresh kill.

IanVanCheese wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Giving them infiltrate and charge after advancing could be fun.
Then you can pull off T1 charges like those warsuits can.

Yeah they need some new rules. - 1 AP would be nice, but something more flavourful would be good too. Maybe a buff once they wipe a unit out, like Electropriests. Could represent them being in a blood frenzy after a fresh kill.

Maybe they can consolidate up to 6 inches and it counts as a charge, so they can fight again in the same turn.
Would make them into one of the most dangerous units against a MSU gunline, because if a horde of them wipes out a squad, they'll just keep going.
Though given the Flayed One's lore, it would probably make more sense that they won't run off to find new victims, as they'd be too busy skinning the corpses.

tneva82 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Warriors? Hmm... No. Lol. I love the production on Flayed Ones. So many synergies possible with them and they will AT LEAST get as close to the enemy as the Wraiths will. Wraiths give enemies an entire turn to negate them

Hide behind terrain, do T1 charge. That's how I do it. I have yet to fail to get them T1 charge. With flayed warriors it's lousy odds of making charge and even if you make it bad damage output.

Look a lot closer to those synergies. Necrons are all about the Synergies.

What synergy? Can't MWBD them. There's no way to boost their AP. There's very little synergy to them. They come out of deepstrike and try that 9" charge(28% odds) and if somehow make it make minor dent and then die.

Check your codex again. I mean not that I'd use him, but the Stormlord comes standard with one of them. But there are others. It's pretty sweet honestly. But the way you use them with a Cryptek and possibly Anrakyr or even the master of deception himself... It's good.

 Jancoran wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Warriors? Hmm... No. Lol. I love the production on Flayed Ones. So many synergies possible with them and they will AT LEAST get as close to the enemy as the Wraiths will. Wraiths give enemies an entire turn to negate them

Hide behind terrain, do T1 charge. That's how I do it. I have yet to fail to get them T1 charge. With flayed warriors it's lousy odds of making charge and even if you make it bad damage output.

Look a lot closer to those synergies. Necrons are all about the Synergies.

What synergy? Can't MWBD them. There's no way to boost their AP. There's very little synergy to them. They come out of deepstrike and try that 9" charge(28% odds) and if somehow make it make minor dent and then die.

Check your codex again. I mean not that I'd use him, but the Stormlord comes standard with one of them. But there are others. It's pretty sweet honestly. But the way you use them with a Cryptek and possibly Anrakyr or even the master of deception himself... It's good.

Please stop playing coy. This is a tactics thread.

 Jancoran wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

 Jancoran wrote:
Warriors? Hmm... No. Lol. I love the production on Flayed Ones. So many synergies possible with them and they will AT LEAST get as close to the enemy as the Wraiths will. Wraiths give enemies an entire turn to negate them

Hide behind terrain, do T1 charge. That's how I do it. I have yet to fail to get them T1 charge. With flayed warriors it's lousy odds of making charge and even if you make it bad damage output.

Look a lot closer to those synergies. Necrons are all about the Synergies.

What synergy? Can't MWBD them. There's no way to boost their AP. There's very little synergy to them. They come out of deepstrike and try that 9" charge(28% odds) and if somehow make it make minor dent and then die.

Check your codex again. I mean not that I'd use him, but the Stormlord comes standard with one of them. But there are others. It's pretty sweet honestly. But the way you use them with a Cryptek and possibly Anrakyr or even the master of deception himself... It's good.

When you deep strike something it is at the end of the Movement phase, you will not get MWBD on them the turn they arrive. And the Named Characters have a 12" or 3" aura. So, you are either foot slogging them or using other tricks to get those characters into position.

If you use the Deceiver, they can not charge your first turn. Thus will be exposed to being shot/charged on the opponent's turn or the opponent just has to put a junk screen in the way or move the ideal targets out of range of your move/charge attempt on your second turn.

 Jancoran wrote:
Check your codex again. I mean not that I'd use him, but the Stormlord comes standard with one of them. But there are others. It's pretty sweet honestly. But the way you use them with a Cryptek and possibly Anrakyr or even the master of deception himself... It's good.

Ummm okay so reroll 1's to hit...weeee. So awesome! Problem with flayed ones isn't hitting. It's lack of AP and GETTING INTO COMBAT!!!

Grans strategist: Nothing related to flayed ones.
Lord of storms: Ditto
MWBD: So you are foregoing deep strike and foot slogging across the field? That's sure death. If you DS you can't use this(PLEASE don't tell me you MWBD flayed ones when they come from deep strike to improve charge roll? As that would make you blatant cheater)
Phaeron: Useless for here. Can't use with deep strike flayed ones so 2 isn't any good.
4++ and improved living metal, none.

So basically you pay 160 pts for reroll to hit and somehow needs to keep up with DS ones...That's not worth it. That 160 pts would be better spent for more flayed ones. More attacks>reroll to hit.

Only synergy that provides is the reroll to hit. But that doesn't solve the issues which is making into combat(PLEASE don't say your grand plan involves DS+MWBD charge? Surely you aren't so sure of them because you blatantly cheat?) and lack of AP.

Master of deception I presume refers to deceiver? That's no good either. You get to position yes but can't charge and then you are shot off the board.

Literally only way to get them into combat reliably is deceiver+zahndrek+obyron but that misses your stormlord and you have spent 840 pts for the 20 guys. 6 wraiths costs 300 and are T1 charging anyway and you aren't having half the army in enemy DZ ready to be killed in return. Hardly most cost efficient way to go around.

So yeah. Fail on you. Where's that awesome synergy you mention? 12" reroll 1's to hit isn't awesome. You arent' going to be within 12" of flayed ones unless you use another character AND relic to deep strike them there as well.

So first attempt from you to show the synergy: Epic fail.

Could it be that GW wants to scrap necrons as a faction?

Necrons havent gotten much GW love for a long time. A few point reductions, thats it.

 Jancoran wrote:
Check your codex again. I mean not that I'd use him, but the Stormlord comes standard with one of them. But there are others. It's pretty sweet honestly. But the way you use them with a Cryptek and possibly Anrakyr or even the master of deception himself... It's good.

It's Good ? Really ? 17ppm. The price of an intercessor. No thanks.

Stormlord only works on Sautekh Flayed Ones. If you bring them at all, you'd bring them as Novokh for the rerolls.

Flayed Ones are bad. You're paying 17 pts a model for a warrior with no gun. As Shaelinith said, that's Intercessor money for a vastly inferior model.

It's not that we don't "see the synergies", it's that they aren't very good..

torblind wrote:
Could it be that GW wants to scrap necrons as a faction?

Nah, we got our Cryptek on Cloak not long ago and Forge World did the Seraptek. Necrons aren't going anywhere, but we just gotta accept that Xenos races don't get the love that Imperial/Chaos do.

Except that Orks recieve fairly frequent new models even if not new rules, Tau got one of the most model-intense releases of a recent codex second only to Primaris, and Eldar are actually poster aliens so get bonkers rules all the time, yeah Xenos get no love.....


I genuinely think we're just the unloved child

EDIT: I forgot Nids existed, which is Ironic given the username, but they're in the saem boat as us, except that at least they seem to be interesting enough for GW to put them in bundle boxes.

tomb blades, gauss or tesla?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 IHateNids wrote:
Except that Orks recieve fairly frequent new models even if not new rules, Tau got one of the most model-intense releases of a recent codex second only to Primaris, and Eldar are actually poster aliens so get bonkers rules all the time, yeah Xenos get no love.....


I genuinely think we're just the unloved child

EDIT: I forgot Nids existed, which is Ironic given the username, but they're in the saem boat as us, except that at least they seem to be interesting enough for GW to put them in bundle boxes.

...bundle boxes? forgebane? last years battleforce, this years apocalypse box... (we are in serious need of some rules love though)

If I were to try and make Flayed ones work, I would try and hide 20 of them in my deployment zone accompanied by an Overlord with the Veil and reroll charges WL trait. Then teleport them out with MWBD for an 8" rerolled charge.

This would be far less effective than 30 Da Jumping Boyz for almost double the cost.

xenoterracide wrote:
tomb blades, gauss or tesla?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 IHateNids wrote:
Except that Orks recieve fairly frequent new models even if not new rules, Tau got one of the most model-intense releases of a recent codex second only to Primaris, and Eldar are actually poster aliens so get bonkers rules all the time, yeah Xenos get no love.....


I genuinely think we're just the unloved child

EDIT: I forgot Nids existed, which is Ironic given the username, but they're in the saem boat as us, except that at least they seem to be interesting enough for GW to put them in bundle boxes.

...bundle boxes? forgebane? last years battleforce, this years apocalypse box... (we are in serious need of some rules love though)

Tomb Blades always Guass IMHO

Forgebane I'll admit I forgot about, but they were still overshadowed by AdMech launch hype. Also, token "robot vs robot lel".

The Christmas Battleforce is the only one I was aware of, because the Apocalypse box was something everybody got so it wasnt special. It wasnt a box for the sake of a box, if you get me?

Rules tho, absolutely we get shafted a lot.

From a design perspective, you’d prefer to have a tiered perspective in every slot type: FA, Elite, HS, etc. This gets modulated based on how you want to reflect certain Faction flavor elements. (For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones).

Starting with internal balance: for the base game (i.e., excluding Forgeworld) you can look at our FA slot for some good design work here: you have cheap options (Scarabs) and midrange options (Wraiths) for melee and similar for shooting (TBs and Destroyers). Our Heavy is similar, but biased to shooting due to faction differentiation: Cheap (ABs), midrange (Doomsday arks).

And then there’s our Elite slot. This is a total mess—which is pretty poor from a Faction differentiation perspective. If the idea is that Necrons are an ‘elite’ army with fewer, better guys this would be the slot to push, along with the Heavy slot. Instead, the tiers seem to be: FOs, then Praetorians and Lychguard, then C’tans. For shooting we have... the Stalker with the antisynergy of being null dynasty. Where are the Elite shooting low range and midrange options? Why are the low and midrange melee options so expensive for such poor performance?

However! This reveals the reason why FOs further suffer. In the modern design criteria, they should really be Troops. Their statline is basically “Warrior, but CC instead of shooting...” but if you took them out of the Elite slot, what will fill its place?

This is also why you don’t see Pariahs coming back. They would be instantly comparable to no less than 4 different effectively equivalent other options in slots and cost ranges where we already have too much.

This glut of midrange, overlapping role options is part of the problem Necrons have in general, and why we get pushed to the extremes of running 6Ark3Scythe, because we have too many options in one spot, and are too anemic elsewhere.

On FOs, there’s one other point: if they actually made them cheaper, there wouldn’t be any to buy: you can only get metal or resin ones both of which are out of production. And I don’t mean this in a “GDUB$$$!” way, I mean, it would be poor game balance to make potentially essential options, with upgraded potential, that are unavailable to your player base. In other words, for good reasons, until/unless they cast plastic FOs, you will absolutely not see significant point drops or effectiveness upgrades.

One side note: it isn’t necessarily the case that Necrons are MEANT to be an Elite concept. It could be that the idea is Necrons are a relentless horde model. In this case then troops and Character or Machinery support would be the name of the game, and we need quite a few more options in these slots.

I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options.

 IHateNids wrote:


The Christmas Battleforce is the only one I was aware of, because the Apocalypse box was something everybody got so it wasnt special. It wasnt a box for the sake of a box, if you get me?

Rules tho, absolutely we get shafted a lot.

Actually not everyone got an apoc box, was it admech that I remember being called out? I don't think 'nids got one either. I do remember being told by the local store manager the people that got apoc boxes were the ones with the highest sales, or something. Don't know if that's true... doesn't feel like it.

sieGermans wrote:
From a design perspective, you’d prefer to have a tiered perspective in every slot type: FA, Elite, HS, etc. This gets modulated based on how you want to reflect certain Faction flavor elements. (For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones).

You definitely shouldn't make a unit pricier or worse just because it doesn't fit into your view of how an army should operate. You can limit the amount of that unit can be included in an army, make the unit sizes small, one per Detachment, one per other choice, but making the unit worse is unfun, especially because GW balance is hit and miss. Sometimes they may be pushing a unit or trying to limit how good a unit is, other times they've just done a poor job at balancing. So you can't say Elites are tier 1 Necron Fast Attack are tier 3 without saying some Necron Elites are tier 0 and some are tier 2 and some Fast Attack are tier 2 and some are tier 4. It won't say on the box whether a unit is tier 1 or tier 4, when balancing pts the most amount of people should be able to have fun with their armies as possible.

And then there’s our Elite slot. This is a total mess—which is pretty poor from a Faction differentiation perspective. If the idea is that Necrons are an ‘elite’ army with fewer, better guys this would be the slot to push, along with the Heavy slot. Instead, the tiers seem to be: FOs, then Praetorians and Lychguard, then C’tans. For shooting we have... the Stalker with the antisynergy of being null dynasty. Where are the Elite shooting low range and midrange options? Why are the low and midrange melee options so expensive for such poor performance.

However! This reveals the reason why FOs further suffer. In the modern design criteria, they should really be Troops. Their statline is basically “Warrior, but CC instead of shooting...” but if you took them out of the Elite slot, what will fill its place?

This glut of midrange, overlapping role options is part of the problem Necrons have in general, and why we get pushed to the extremes of running 6Ark3Scythe, because we have too many options in one spot, and are too anemic elsewhere.

FOs are Elites because of fluff. Troops are Troops to incentivise building armies with units that don't do crazy stuff or at least they do less crazy stuff than the Elites, they may be more restricted in weapons they bring or be less elite. Our bad elites are bad because they cost too many pts, you are way overanalyzing this. Doomsday Arks are good because they are pts-effective. There is no secret sauce there, the rest of the codex is just relatively overcosted. Maybe people would run Flayed One bombs, you can add as many rules as you want but at the end of the day you just have to look at the value to cost ratio of different units and take the units that provide the most value to your list and playstyle. Instead of fiddling with giving units various abilities or changing their combat roles you should just change their pts and be done with it. Except when you have a problem with their gameplay, I don't think Monoliths are fun as-is, I don't think they evoke Necron technology when I've played with them, so I think their rules need to be changed. How does making Flayed Ones into Troops evoke more or a Necron feel, how is the gameplay better? Well it's better because some Dynasties use a lot of Flayed Ones, so changing them into Troops is a good idea from a thematic stand-point. Changing FOs to Troops to make them more viable outside of casual settings is a waste of time when you can just cut their pts to 15 and people might start to experiment with them competitively or 12 and people take them in moderate amounts or all the way down to 9 and bam people spam them.

One side note: it isn’t necessarily the case that Necrons are MEANT to be an Elite concept. It could be that the idea is Necrons are a relentless horde model. In this case then troops and Character or Machinery support would be the name of the game, and we need quite a few more options in these slots.

That would ruin the theme of the army. Fielding tonnes of similar models is a thing that I enjoy, at least in my Troops choices. If Deathmarks and Flayed Ones were Troops and fielded 2x5 Deathmarks, 2x5 Flayed, 1x20 Warriors, 1x10 Immortals that wouldn't be as satisfying to me as fielding 6x10 Immortals or 3x20 Warriors. Cool auxiliary options are cool, but the soulless core should remain an option. I don't see the need for a dozen more kinds of medium-range infantry or more Elite options. I really don't need any more Necrons models, maybe in 5 years I'd want something. For now, I'd like some more Character sculpts and a posable Transcendent C'tan with a couple of different heads and arms. What SM got with their 6 different kinds of Intercessors is not appealing to me. 6 different kinds of Crypteks would and maybe that just means I want Necrons to be pushed into a HQ direction instead of a Troops or Elites direction from your perspective an army having a slant. IMO the Necrons HQ slot isn't just relative to the rest of the slots, it's tiny, held up only by a very nice selection of unique units.

I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options.

You're overanalyzing some more here, GW are mostly just bad at balance and once in a while they sneak in an obvious or not so obvious buff or nerf to push new product. Consider the Imperium, they have the best chaff and the best Titanic units, Necrons having similarly diverse options would not hurt the game. Doomsday Arks might get relatively stronger with a chaff squad on the same tier as Infantry Squads, but the price would just have to be adjusted.

 vict0988 wrote:

sieGermans wrote:
From a design perspective, you’d prefer to have a tiered perspective in every slot type: FA, Elite, HS, etc. This gets modulated based on how you want to reflect certain Faction flavor elements. (For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones).

You definitely shouldn't make a unit pricier or worse just because it doesn't fit into your view of how an army should operate. You can limit the amount of that unit can be included in an army, make the unit sizes small, one per Detachment, one per other choice, but making the unit worse is unfun, especially because GW balance is hit and miss. Sometimes they may be pushing a unit or trying to limit how good a unit is, other times they've just done a poor job at balancing. So you can't say Elites are tier 1 Necron Fast Attack are tier 3 without saying some Necron Elites are tier 0 and some are tier 2 and some Fast Attack are tier 2 and some are tier 4. It won't say on the box whether a unit is tier 1 or tier 4, when balancing pts the most amount of people should be able to have fun with their armies as possible.

And then there’s our Elite slot. This is a total mess—which is pretty poor from a Faction differentiation perspective. If the idea is that Necrons are an ‘elite’ army with fewer, better guys this would be the slot to push, along with the Heavy slot. Instead, the tiers seem to be: FOs, then Praetorians and Lychguard, then C’tans. For shooting we have... the Stalker with the antisynergy of being null dynasty. Where are the Elite shooting low range and midrange options? Why are the low and midrange melee options so expensive for such poor performance.

However! This reveals the reason why FOs further suffer. In the modern design criteria, they should really be Troops. Their statline is basically “Warrior, but CC instead of shooting...” but if you took them out of the Elite slot, what will fill its place?

This glut of midrange, overlapping role options is part of the problem Necrons have in general, and why we get pushed to the extremes of running 6Ark3Scythe, because we have too many options in one spot, and are too anemic elsewhere.

FOs are Elites because of fluff. Troops are Troops to incentivise building armies with units that don't do crazy stuff or at least they do less crazy stuff than the Elites, they may be more restricted in weapons they bring or be less elite. Our bad elites are bad because they cost too many pts, you are way overanalyzing this. Doomsday Arks are good because they are pts-effective. There is no secret sauce there, the rest of the codex is just relatively overcosted. Maybe people would run Flayed One bombs, you can add as many rules as you want but at the end of the day you just have to look at the value to cost ratio of different units and take the units that provide the most value to your list and playstyle. Instead of fiddling with giving units various abilities or changing their combat roles you should just change their pts and be done with it. Except when you have a problem with their gameplay, I don't think Monoliths are fun as-is, I don't think they evoke Necron technology when I've played with them, so I think their rules need to be changed. How does making Flayed Ones into Troops evoke more or a Necron feel, how is the gameplay better? Well it's better because some Dynasties use a lot of Flayed Ones, so changing them into Troops is a good idea from a thematic stand-point. Changing FOs to Troops to make them more viable outside of casual settings is a waste of time when you can just cut their pts to 15 and people might start to experiment with them competitively or 12 and people take them in moderate amounts or all the way down to 9 and bam people spam them.

One side note: it isn’t necessarily the case that Necrons are MEANT to be an Elite concept. It could be that the idea is Necrons are a relentless horde model. In this case then troops and Character or Machinery support would be the name of the game, and we need quite a few more options in these slots.

That would ruin the theme of the army. Fielding tonnes of similar models is a thing that I enjoy, at least in my Troops choices. If Deathmarks and Flayed Ones were Troops and fielded 2x5 Deathmarks, 2x5 Flayed, 1x20 Warriors, 1x10 Immortals that wouldn't be as satisfying to me as fielding 6x10 Immortals or 3x20 Warriors. Cool auxiliary options are cool, but the soulless core should remain an option. I don't see the need for a dozen more kinds of medium-range infantry or more Elite options. I really don't need any more Necrons models, maybe in 5 years I'd want something. For now, I'd like some more Character sculpts and a posable Transcendent C'tan with a couple of different heads and arms. What SM got with their 6 different kinds of Intercessors is not appealing to me. 6 different kinds of Crypteks would and maybe that just means I want Necrons to be pushed into a HQ direction instead of a Troops or Elites direction from your perspective an army having a slant. IMO the Necrons HQ slot isn't just relative to the rest of the slots, it's tiny, held up only by a very nice selection of unique units.

I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options.

You're overanalyzing some more here, GW are mostly just bad at balance and once in a while they sneak in an obvious or not so obvious buff or nerf to push new product. Consider the Imperium, they have the best chaff and the best Titanic units, Necrons having similarly diverse options would not hurt the game. Doomsday Arks might get relatively stronger with a chaff squad on the same tier as Infantry Squads, but the price would just have to be adjusted.

Describing the incredibly facile and overly simplistic run-down I gave as “OVER-analyzing” has undertones of Dunning-Kruger. Just because the outcome is poor doesn’t mean GW doesn’t put a lot of effort and thought into internally balancing these systems. I guarantee you I’m probably wrong 100 different ways, but it won’t be because I’ve analyzed it TOO deeply.

I may have been ambiguous when I referred to tiers; that was referring to Quality assuming an equal application of points:effectiveness. I wasn’t referring to tier of competitiveness.

I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating: FOs are overcosted or underperforming for their cost and probably in the wrong force organization. And they have been for a while. And I am willing to provide a testable hypothesis: they will only be seriously re-tooled if/when they become available in plastic. I have 30 metal ones I’ve painted, ready to go, so hopefully I’m wrong!

I have the same feeling with FO. They won't ever be reworked until they get a plastic kit. But even then, see what they done with banshees, i would clearly not be overly optimistic about it.

 Draco765 wrote:

When you deep strike something it is at the end of the Movement phase, you will not get MWBD on them the turn they arrive. And the Named Characters have a 12" or 3" aura. So, you are either foot slogging them or using other tricks to get those characters into position.

If you use the Deceiver, they can not charge your first turn. Thus will be exposed to being shot/charged on the opponent's turn or the opponent just has to put a junk screen in the way or move the ideal targets out of range of your move/charge attempt on your second turn.

I didnt literally mean the literal Deciever, and that was my bad. By Deceiver, I was talking about Zahndrek and wasnt even thinking about the fact that there was an actual deciver. My Will be done wasn't what I was referring to either. So yeah sorry for confusing you there.

sieGermans wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoiler:

sieGermans wrote:
From a design perspective, you’d prefer to have a tiered perspective in every slot type: FA, Elite, HS, etc. This gets modulated based on how you want to reflect certain Faction flavor elements. (For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones).

You definitely shouldn't make a unit pricier or worse just because it doesn't fit into your view of how an army should operate. You can limit the amount of that unit can be included in an army, make the unit sizes small, one per Detachment, one per other choice, but making the unit worse is unfun, especially because GW balance is hit and miss. Sometimes they may be pushing a unit or trying to limit how good a unit is, other times they've just done a poor job at balancing. So you can't say Elites are tier 1 Necron Fast Attack are tier 3 without saying some Necron Elites are tier 0 and some are tier 2 and some Fast Attack are tier 2 and some are tier 4. It won't say on the box whether a unit is tier 1 or tier 4, when balancing pts the most amount of people should be able to have fun with their armies as possible.

And then there’s our Elite slot. This is a total mess—which is pretty poor from a Faction differentiation perspective. If the idea is that Necrons are an ‘elite’ army with fewer, better guys this would be the slot to push, along with the Heavy slot. Instead, the tiers seem to be: FOs, then Praetorians and Lychguard, then C’tans. For shooting we have... the Stalker with the antisynergy of being null dynasty. Where are the Elite shooting low range and midrange options? Why are the low and midrange melee options so expensive for such poor performance.

However! This reveals the reason why FOs further suffer. In the modern design criteria, they should really be Troops. Their statline is basically “Warrior, but CC instead of shooting...” but if you took them out of the Elite slot, what will fill its place?

This glut of midrange, overlapping role options is part of the problem Necrons have in general, and why we get pushed to the extremes of running 6Ark3Scythe, because we have too many options in one spot, and are too anemic elsewhere.

FOs are Elites because of fluff. Troops are Troops to incentivise building armies with units that don't do crazy stuff or at least they do less crazy stuff than the Elites, they may be more restricted in weapons they bring or be less elite. Our bad elites are bad because they cost too many pts, you are way overanalyzing this. Doomsday Arks are good because they are pts-effective. There is no secret sauce there, the rest of the codex is just relatively overcosted. Maybe people would run Flayed One bombs, you can add as many rules as you want but at the end of the day you just have to look at the value to cost ratio of different units and take the units that provide the most value to your list and playstyle. Instead of fiddling with giving units various abilities or changing their combat roles you should just change their pts and be done with it. Except when you have a problem with their gameplay, I don't think Monoliths are fun as-is, I don't think they evoke Necron technology when I've played with them, so I think their rules need to be changed. How does making Flayed Ones into Troops evoke more or a Necron feel, how is the gameplay better? Well it's better because some Dynasties use a lot of Flayed Ones, so changing them into Troops is a good idea from a thematic stand-point. Changing FOs to Troops to make them more viable outside of casual settings is a waste of time when you can just cut their pts to 15 and people might start to experiment with them competitively or 12 and people take them in moderate amounts or all the way down to 9 and bam people spam them.

One side note: it isn’t necessarily the case that Necrons are MEANT to be an Elite concept. It could be that the idea is Necrons are a relentless horde model. In this case then troops and Character or Machinery support would be the name of the game, and we need quite a few more options in these slots.

That would ruin the theme of the army. Fielding tonnes of similar models is a thing that I enjoy, at least in my Troops choices. If Deathmarks and Flayed Ones were Troops and fielded 2x5 Deathmarks, 2x5 Flayed, 1x20 Warriors, 1x10 Immortals that wouldn't be as satisfying to me as fielding 6x10 Immortals or 3x20 Warriors. Cool auxiliary options are cool, but the soulless core should remain an option. I don't see the need for a dozen more kinds of medium-range infantry or more Elite options. I really don't need any more Necrons models, maybe in 5 years I'd want something. For now, I'd like some more Character sculpts and a posable Transcendent C'tan with a couple of different heads and arms. What SM got with their 6 different kinds of Intercessors is not appealing to me. 6 different kinds of Crypteks would and maybe that just means I want Necrons to be pushed into a HQ direction instead of a Troops or Elites direction from your perspective an army having a slant. IMO the Necrons HQ slot isn't just relative to the rest of the slots, it's tiny, held up only by a very nice selection of unique units.

I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options.

You're overanalyzing some more here, GW are mostly just bad at balance and once in a while they sneak in an obvious or not so obvious buff or nerf to push new product. Consider the Imperium, they have the best chaff and the best Titanic units, Necrons having similarly diverse options would not hurt the game. Doomsday Arks might get relatively stronger with a chaff squad on the same tier as Infantry Squads, but the price would just have to be adjusted.

Describing the incredibly facile and overly simplistic run-down I gave as “OVER-analyzing” has undertones of Dunning-Kruger. Just because the outcome is poor doesn’t mean GW doesn’t put a lot of effort and thought into internally balancing these systems. I guarantee you I’m probably wrong 100 different ways, but it won’t be because I’ve analyzed it TOO deeply.

I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating: FOs are overcosted or underperforming for their cost and probably in the wrong force organization. And they have been for a while. And I am willing to provide a testable hypothesis: they will only be seriously re-tooled if/when they become available in plastic. I have 30 metal ones I’ve painted, ready to go, so hopefully I’m wrong!

Occam's razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.
Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Hitchens' razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

What is more simple, "GW is bad at balancing" or "I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options."

Why do you believe that GW are waiting to buff Flayed Ones for a plastic release? Obliterators got a new kit and then they were nerfed.

What is your proof of any of your theories? Why do you claim expertise on the subject of game balance and GW's corporate culture? From the rumours I've heard, GW has a truly terrible testing methodology (throw a bit of everything on the table and tell us how you feel about it). Have you tried balancing a codex? Why do you claim my assessment that the pts are just off to be flawed? I've written a fandex for Necrons that I used a couple of times, then I wrote another codex for Necrons I used several dozen times and iterated upon several times, I've also written and iterated upon half a dozen other fandexes for other factions. Pts is the ultimate decider, I don't care if you have a unit that has an ability that lets you win on a 2+, if it costs 2001 pts then you can't bring it to a 2k game.

I may have been ambiguous when I referred to tiers; that was referring to Quality assuming an equal application of points:effectiveness. I wasn’t referring to tier of competitiveness.

You said "For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones" so let's say Necrons are a ‘slow, plodding army’ and I want to give them as many FA options as HS options for some reason, I design Destroyers, Scarabs and Wraiths. Now I test them and find out they are worth 50, 13 and 50 pts, but you told me they need to have pricier Fast Attack options so I set their costs at 60, 20 and 60. Or do you mean to say that a ‘slow, plodding army’ should never have any fast cheap units like Scarabs? Now you talk of Quality, so do you instead mean Necrons should not have access to Wraiths and Destroyers because those are more elite or higher quality units?

 vict0988 wrote:

sieGermans wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoiler:

sieGermans wrote:
From a design perspective, you’d prefer to have a tiered perspective in every slot type: FA, Elite, HS, etc. This gets modulated based on how you want to reflect certain Faction flavor elements. (For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones).

You definitely shouldn't make a unit pricier or worse just because it doesn't fit into your view of how an army should operate. You can limit the amount of that unit can be included in an army, make the unit sizes small, one per Detachment, one per other choice, but making the unit worse is unfun, especially because GW balance is hit and miss. Sometimes they may be pushing a unit or trying to limit how good a unit is, other times they've just done a poor job at balancing. So you can't say Elites are tier 1 Necron Fast Attack are tier 3 without saying some Necron Elites are tier 0 and some are tier 2 and some Fast Attack are tier 2 and some are tier 4. It won't say on the box whether a unit is tier 1 or tier 4, when balancing pts the most amount of people should be able to have fun with their armies as possible.

And then there’s our Elite slot. This is a total mess—which is pretty poor from a Faction differentiation perspective. If the idea is that Necrons are an ‘elite’ army with fewer, better guys this would be the slot to push, along with the Heavy slot. Instead, the tiers seem to be: FOs, then Praetorians and Lychguard, then C’tans. For shooting we have... the Stalker with the antisynergy of being null dynasty. Where are the Elite shooting low range and midrange options? Why are the low and midrange melee options so expensive for such poor performance.

However! This reveals the reason why FOs further suffer. In the modern design criteria, they should really be Troops. Their statline is basically “Warrior, but CC instead of shooting...” but if you took them out of the Elite slot, what will fill its place?

This glut of midrange, overlapping role options is part of the problem Necrons have in general, and why we get pushed to the extremes of running 6Ark3Scythe, because we have too many options in one spot, and are too anemic elsewhere.

FOs are Elites because of fluff. Troops are Troops to incentivise building armies with units that don't do crazy stuff or at least they do less crazy stuff than the Elites, they may be more restricted in weapons they bring or be less elite. Our bad elites are bad because they cost too many pts, you are way overanalyzing this. Doomsday Arks are good because they are pts-effective. There is no secret sauce there, the rest of the codex is just relatively overcosted. Maybe people would run Flayed One bombs, you can add as many rules as you want but at the end of the day you just have to look at the value to cost ratio of different units and take the units that provide the most value to your list and playstyle. Instead of fiddling with giving units various abilities or changing their combat roles you should just change their pts and be done with it. Except when you have a problem with their gameplay, I don't think Monoliths are fun as-is, I don't think they evoke Necron technology when I've played with them, so I think their rules need to be changed. How does making Flayed Ones into Troops evoke more or a Necron feel, how is the gameplay better? Well it's better because some Dynasties use a lot of Flayed Ones, so changing them into Troops is a good idea from a thematic stand-point. Changing FOs to Troops to make them more viable outside of casual settings is a waste of time when you can just cut their pts to 15 and people might start to experiment with them competitively or 12 and people take them in moderate amounts or all the way down to 9 and bam people spam them.

One side note: it isn’t necessarily the case that Necrons are MEANT to be an Elite concept. It could be that the idea is Necrons are a relentless horde model. In this case then troops and Character or Machinery support would be the name of the game, and we need quite a few more options in these slots.

That would ruin the theme of the army. Fielding tonnes of similar models is a thing that I enjoy, at least in my Troops choices. If Deathmarks and Flayed Ones were Troops and fielded 2x5 Deathmarks, 2x5 Flayed, 1x20 Warriors, 1x10 Immortals that wouldn't be as satisfying to me as fielding 6x10 Immortals or 3x20 Warriors. Cool auxiliary options are cool, but the soulless core should remain an option. I don't see the need for a dozen more kinds of medium-range infantry or more Elite options. I really don't need any more Necrons models, maybe in 5 years I'd want something. For now, I'd like some more Character sculpts and a posable Transcendent C'tan with a couple of different heads and arms. What SM got with their 6 different kinds of Intercessors is not appealing to me. 6 different kinds of Crypteks would and maybe that just means I want Necrons to be pushed into a HQ direction instead of a Troops or Elites direction from your perspective an army having a slant. IMO the Necrons HQ slot isn't just relative to the rest of the slots, it's tiny, held up only by a very nice selection of unique units.

I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options.

You're overanalyzing some more here, GW are mostly just bad at balance and once in a while they sneak in an obvious or not so obvious buff or nerf to push new product. Consider the Imperium, they have the best chaff and the best Titanic units, Necrons having similarly diverse options would not hurt the game. Doomsday Arks might get relatively stronger with a chaff squad on the same tier as Infantry Squads, but the price would just have to be adjusted.

Describing the incredibly facile and overly simplistic run-down I gave as “OVER-analyzing” has undertones of Dunning-Kruger. Just because the outcome is poor doesn’t mean GW doesn’t put a lot of effort and thought into internally balancing these systems. I guarantee you I’m probably wrong 100 different ways, but it won’t be because I’ve analyzed it TOO deeply.

I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating: FOs are overcosted or underperforming for their cost and probably in the wrong force organization. And they have been for a while. And I am willing to provide a testable hypothesis: they will only be seriously re-tooled if/when they become available in plastic. I have 30 metal ones I’ve painted, ready to go, so hopefully I’m wrong!

Occam's razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.
Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Hitchens' razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

What is more simple, "GW is bad at balancing" or "I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options."

Why do you believe that GW are waiting to buff Flayed Ones for a plastic release? Obliterators got a new kit and then they were nerfed.

What is your proof of any of your theories? Why do you claim expertise on the subject of game balance and GW's corporate culture? From the rumours I've heard, GW has a truly terrible testing methodology (throw a bit of everything on the table and tell us how you feel about it). Have you tried balancing a codex? Why do you claim my assessment that the pts are just off to be flawed? I've written a fandex for Necrons that I used a couple of times, then I wrote another codex for Necrons I used several dozen times and iterated upon several times, I've also written and iterated upon half a dozen other fandexes for other factions. Pts is the ultimate decider, I don't care if you have a unit that has an ability that lets you win on a 2+, if it costs 2001 pts then you can't bring it to a 2k game.

I may have been ambiguous when I referred to tiers; that was referring to Quality assuming an equal application of points:effectiveness. I wasn’t referring to tier of competitiveness.

You said "For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones" so let's say Necrons are a ‘slow, plodding army’ and I want to give them as many FA options as HS options for some reason, I design Destroyers, Scarabs and Wraiths. Now I test them and find out they are worth 50, 13 and 50 pts, but you told me they need to have pricier Fast Attack options so I set their costs at 60, 20 and 60. Or do you mean to say that a ‘slow, plodding army’ should never have any fast cheap units like Scarabs? Now you talk of Quality, so do you instead mean Necrons should not have access to Wraiths and Destroyers because those are more elite or higher quality units?

First of all, I’d really appreciate a more civil tone. I’m happy to be wrong, and I’d love to explore where and how, but it’s pretty hard when you adopt such a vicious stance. I get ‘this is the internet’ but we can do/be better.

Occams’s Razor is philosophically problematic. In practice it is difficult to be sure that you have reduced an argument to its simplest form for comparison. This is a trap you fall into here. You compared the following:

“GW is bad at balancing” to “GW made a mistake in design”

I think it is unlikely that an absolute and permanent assessment of capability is more correct than a performance assessment on a specific set of actions.

You ask why I thought GW is waiting for a plastic release before buffing FOs; which suggests my post was written poorly since that’s one thing I was talking about directly. Rather than repeat myself a second time, I’m happy to drop it. I would point out that my point wasn’t that it was a necessary precondition, but rather would be evidence to support the overall point.

You ask for “proof of my theories” and that’s what I was offering by providing testable hypotheses. Admittedly, they are Observation studies rather than Retrospective studies, but we get enough of the latter ad nauseam on these forums, and it’s a bit flawed anyway since there’s so many confounding variables between different editions, different writers, different design philosophies, etc.

You asked why I claim expertise and then proffer your own repeated excursions into the activity. I don’t have any expertise, so feel free to dismiss whatever you feel like on claim of authority. I’d suggest if you think an idea is worth examination, that can be true even without expertise. In a similar vein, however, I simply cannot accept the fact that you’ve written a bunch of (probably excellent!) proposed ruleset as sufficient expertise to be dismissive of conflicting discussion on the subject. I do really appreciate your excitement about the hobby and this faction though—it’s superfans like you who really support this game for the rest of us with quality extracurricular content, analysis, and help.

You raise a great clarification question around what I meant about balancing around a faction philosophy. I’m glad you asked, since this was what I was trying to describe in the first post, and clearly did so quite poorly, since this is now my third post!

When designing a Codex for Faction you have quite a few questions you need to answer first before you begin: Why should this Faction exist? How will it be different from the other factions that already exist?

The answer can be “it will only look different, but it’s rules will be identical to [another faction]”. For a while, some of the SM chapters were like this, even! It can work, but don’t expect too much excitement about it because people like Differentiation, and it is far more powerful to have deep differentiation than simply superficial.

If you have decided to make the Faction mechanically distinct, you next need to ask some fluffy questions to guide later decisions: How will the mechanics reflect the chosen areas of distinction you’ve chosen for this Faction? How will players be presented with options that make them feel engaged with the army’s flavor? How will opponents playing against this faction experience the mechanic distinction?

To answer these, you need to be rather robust in understanding the faction’s fluff: what does this faction care about? What does it oppose? What drives it? How does it solve problems? What does it excel at and wha does it do poorly? These are important, since they help you answer the former questions in a way which gives Mechanical Distinction.

With a game as mechanically dense as WH40K you thankfully have TONS of different knobs and levers you can pull to make these mechanic distinctions. At the model level, you can use relative changes in BS, Strength, and AP to demonstrate competence or incompetence. You can use Toughness and Saves to demonstrate resilience.

At the Faction level, however, you should have a coherent plan to reflect the Faction distinctions you set up earlier in the armies selection choices. If you have a “fast hit and run” faction and a “tough defensive” faction, it would be inappropriate to give them each all the exact same options at the same costs and availability.

This is where you suggested you can use selection restrictions to make these distinctions. Presumably you would either forbid or restrict how many bikers the defensive force could take and vice versa. This is definitely a good knob you can use! It’s also fairly realistic to our own human experience of opportunity costs in military investment.

But there are absolutely other tools at your disposal! Remember one of the questions: “What is this Faction good at? What is it bad at?” We didn’t give that level of detail in the fast/defensive example earlier (a good reason to make sure your faction philosophy design document is thorough—especially for larger design teams working collaboratively).

Let’s pretend the defensive faction, by virtue of focusing on “defending their homeland from raiding attacks” has invested in fortifications at the expense of R&D into other options, and so are bad at designing motorcycle engines or have inefficient antigrav tech. Here rather than giving both factions the same options at the same cost and merely saying the defensive army can only have fewer of them, you could instead reflect the worse tech as an inefficiency in the production of the same output, and increase the relative point cost for the same option for the defensive army. Or maybe they don’t have the same option at all, but for the same cost they have a weaker version. Or maybe they have the same costs and availability, but you make the drivers less experienced and worsen their WS and BS.

You can also reflect this phenomenon by designing in some more complexity: if you establish a baseline ratio of point:effectiveness, you can set up different bands (I’m avoiding using the term ‘tier’ here!) of Units, like: Cheap, Midrange, Powerful. So, cheaper and weaker units, more moderately costed and powerful units, and expensive powerful units. In an idealized case, with equal points, they would kill each other identically as quickly; but that’s unlikely.

So returning to the example, another permutation would be to give more Bands of options in the Fast Attack slot to the hit and run faction than to the Defensive faction. Or maybe not give any cheap or powerful options to the Defensive faction. Etc.

While you’re right that the point cost approach can be difficult. It’s one of the things people point to with frustration because players believe all like options should cost the same; but it’s simply not the case in a properly designed game with distinct factions. ALSO fair is to say it’s not the only tool either can you could try to design it without this option, but what a missed opportunity to reflect some deep flavor in the mechanics.

Sheesh. No if you have 2 units just as effective only noob game designer would make them cost differently based on fluff. Balance needed!

Number restrictions are better though for 40k scale also stupid and artificial. White scars can and do field slower units in numbers appropriate for 40k. Blood angels have enough defensive units to make gunline ba totally appropriate in 40k

Lol everyone pulling their A-level philosophy knowledge out to argue about bloody Flayed Ones.

tneva82 wrote:
Sheesh. No if you have 2 units just as effective only noob game designer would make them cost differently based on fluff. Balance needed!

Number restrictions are better though for 40k scale also stupid and artificial. White scars can and do field slower units in numbers appropriate for 40k. Blood angels have enough defensive units to make gunline ba totally appropriate in 40k

This is a totally valid game design approach. You may find that it fails to satisfy a player-base who want meaningful distinctions between factions.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

IanVanCheese wrote:
Lol everyone pulling their A-level philosophy knowledge out to argue about bloody Flayed Ones.

I don’t think anyone’s arguing—or at least I hope not!

I think what we’re discussing are the underlying design mechanics upon which rest Flayed Ones along with a bunch of other phenomena we’ve been experiencing.

sieGermans wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoiler:

sieGermans wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

sieGermans wrote:
From a design perspective, you’d prefer to have a tiered perspective in every slot type: FA, Elite, HS, etc. This gets modulated based on how you want to reflect certain Faction flavor elements. (For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones).

You definitely shouldn't make a unit pricier or worse just because it doesn't fit into your view of how an army should operate. You can limit the amount of that unit can be included in an army, make the unit sizes small, one per Detachment, one per other choice, but making the unit worse is unfun, especially because GW balance is hit and miss. Sometimes they may be pushing a unit or trying to limit how good a unit is, other times they've just done a poor job at balancing. So you can't say Elites are tier 1 Necron Fast Attack are tier 3 without saying some Necron Elites are tier 0 and some are tier 2 and some Fast Attack are tier 2 and some are tier 4. It won't say on the box whether a unit is tier 1 or tier 4, when balancing pts the most amount of people should be able to have fun with their armies as possible.

And then there’s our Elite slot. This is a total mess—which is pretty poor from a Faction differentiation perspective. If the idea is that Necrons are an ‘elite’ army with fewer, better guys this would be the slot to push, along with the Heavy slot. Instead, the tiers seem to be: FOs, then Praetorians and Lychguard, then C’tans. For shooting we have... the Stalker with the antisynergy of being null dynasty. Where are the Elite shooting low range and midrange options? Why are the low and midrange melee options so expensive for such poor performance.

However! This reveals the reason why FOs further suffer. In the modern design criteria, they should really be Troops. Their statline is basically “Warrior, but CC instead of shooting...” but if you took them out of the Elite slot, what will fill its place?

This glut of midrange, overlapping role options is part of the problem Necrons have in general, and why we get pushed to the extremes of running 6Ark3Scythe, because we have too many options in one spot, and are too anemic elsewhere.

FOs are Elites because of fluff. Troops are Troops to incentivise building armies with units that don't do crazy stuff or at least they do less crazy stuff than the Elites, they may be more restricted in weapons they bring or be less elite. Our bad elites are bad because they cost too many pts, you are way overanalyzing this. Doomsday Arks are good because they are pts-effective. There is no secret sauce there, the rest of the codex is just relatively overcosted. Maybe people would run Flayed One bombs, you can add as many rules as you want but at the end of the day you just have to look at the value to cost ratio of different units and take the units that provide the most value to your list and playstyle. Instead of fiddling with giving units various abilities or changing their combat roles you should just change their pts and be done with it. Except when you have a problem with their gameplay, I don't think Monoliths are fun as-is, I don't think they evoke Necron technology when I've played with them, so I think their rules need to be changed. How does making Flayed Ones into Troops evoke more or a Necron feel, how is the gameplay better? Well it's better because some Dynasties use a lot of Flayed Ones, so changing them into Troops is a good idea from a thematic stand-point. Changing FOs to Troops to make them more viable outside of casual settings is a waste of time when you can just cut their pts to 15 and people might start to experiment with them competitively or 12 and people take them in moderate amounts or all the way down to 9 and bam people spam them.

One side note: it isn’t necessarily the case that Necrons are MEANT to be an Elite concept. It could be that the idea is Necrons are a relentless horde model. In this case then troops and Character or Machinery support would be the name of the game, and we need quite a few more options in these slots.

That would ruin the theme of the army. Fielding tonnes of similar models is a thing that I enjoy, at least in my Troops choices. If Deathmarks and Flayed Ones were Troops and fielded 2x5 Deathmarks, 2x5 Flayed, 1x20 Warriors, 1x10 Immortals that wouldn't be as satisfying to me as fielding 6x10 Immortals or 3x20 Warriors. Cool auxiliary options are cool, but the soulless core should remain an option. I don't see the need for a dozen more kinds of medium-range infantry or more Elite options. I really don't need any more Necrons models, maybe in 5 years I'd want something. For now, I'd like some more Character sculpts and a posable Transcendent C'tan with a couple of different heads and arms. What SM got with their 6 different kinds of Intercessors is not appealing to me. 6 different kinds of Crypteks would and maybe that just means I want Necrons to be pushed into a HQ direction instead of a Troops or Elites direction from your perspective an army having a slant. IMO the Necrons HQ slot isn't just relative to the rest of the slots, it's tiny, held up only by a very nice selection of unique units.

I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options.

You're overanalyzing some more here, GW are mostly just bad at balance and once in a while they sneak in an obvious or not so obvious buff or nerf to push new product. Consider the Imperium, they have the best chaff and the best Titanic units, Necrons having similarly diverse options would not hurt the game. Doomsday Arks might get relatively stronger with a chaff squad on the same tier as Infantry Squads, but the price would just have to be adjusted.

Describing the incredibly facile and overly simplistic run-down I gave as “OVER-analyzing” has undertones of Dunning-Kruger. Just because the outcome is poor doesn’t mean GW doesn’t put a lot of effort and thought into internally balancing these systems. I guarantee you I’m probably wrong 100 different ways, but it won’t be because I’ve analyzed it TOO deeply.

I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating: FOs are overcosted or underperforming for their cost and probably in the wrong force organization. And they have been for a while. And I am willing to provide a testable hypothesis: they will only be seriously re-tooled if/when they become available in plastic. I have 30 metal ones I’ve painted, ready to go, so hopefully I’m wrong!

Occam's razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.
Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Hitchens' razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

What is more simple, "GW is bad at balancing" or "I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options."

Why do you believe that GW are waiting to buff Flayed Ones for a plastic release? Obliterators got a new kit and then they were nerfed.

What is your proof of any of your theories? Why do you claim expertise on the subject of game balance and GW's corporate culture? From the rumours I've heard, GW has a truly terrible testing methodology (throw a bit of everything on the table and tell us how you feel about it). Have you tried balancing a codex? Why do you claim my assessment that the pts are just off to be flawed? I've written a fandex for Necrons that I used a couple of times, then I wrote another codex for Necrons I used several dozen times and iterated upon several times, I've also written and iterated upon half a dozen other fandexes for other factions. Pts is the ultimate decider, I don't care if you have a unit that has an ability that lets you win on a 2+, if it costs 2001 pts then you can't bring it to a 2k game.

I may have been ambiguous when I referred to tiers; that was referring to Quality assuming an equal application of points:effectiveness. I wasn’t referring to tier of competitiveness.

You said "For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones" so let's say Necrons are a ‘slow, plodding army’ and I want to give them as many FA options as HS options for some reason, I design Destroyers, Scarabs and Wraiths. Now I test them and find out they are worth 50, 13 and 50 pts, but you told me they need to have pricier Fast Attack options so I set their costs at 60, 20 and 60. Or do you mean to say that a ‘slow, plodding army’ should never have any fast cheap units like Scarabs? Now you talk of Quality, so do you instead mean Necrons should not have access to Wraiths and Destroyers because those are more elite or higher quality units?

First of all, I’d really appreciate a more civil tone. I’m happy to be wrong, and I’d love to explore where and how, but it’s pretty hard when you adopt such a vicious stance. I get ‘this is the internet’ but we can do/be better.

I don't believe it's uncivil to say that you are overanalyzing, I did find it uncivil when you invoked the Dunning-Kruger effect since you are thereby implying that I am so unknowledgeable about that which I am speaking that I don't even see how little I know. It's a thinly veiled way of saying "m8 you're an idiot you better shut up and listen to what I (an intellectual) am saying". This is also why I stated my amateur game-design credentials, which admittedly aren't worth three hats, but I do believe I know enough about game design and balance to say that I'm also aware of the difficulty of balancing a game, even with 99% pure intent and with a better balancing methodology balance mistakes still happen.

Occams’s Razor is philosophically problematic. In practice it is difficult to be sure that you have reduced an argument to its simplest form for comparison. This is a trap you fall into here. You compared the following:

“GW is bad at balancing” to “GW made a mistake in design”

That wasn't the argument I read, it doesn't matter whether GW has decided that Necrons are elite or chaff, either they intentionally made Flayed Ones overcosted because of a design decision or they accidentally made them overcosted because they made a mistake or they made them overcosted because they don't want to sell finecast Flayed Ones. Your argument for why they made that design decision to make Flayed Ones underpowered was that Necrons are neither designed to be elite or nor to be chaff. Every faction has good chaff and good elite units. Imperium has Infantry Squads and Bullgryn, Chaos has Plaguebearers and Rubric Squads, Necrons have Scarabs and Immortals.

I think it is unlikely that an absolute and permanent assessment of capability is more correct than a performance assessment on a specific set of actions.

You ask why I thought GW is waiting for a plastic release before buffing FOs; which suggests my post was written poorly since that’s one thing I was talking about directly. Rather than repeat myself a second time, I’m happy to drop it. I would point out that my point wasn’t that it was a necessary precondition, but rather would be evidence to support the overall point.

You ask for “proof of my theories” and that’s what I was offering by providing testable hypotheses. Admittedly, they are Observation studies rather than Retrospective studies, but we get enough of the latter ad nauseam on these forums, and it’s a bit flawed anyway since there’s so many confounding variables between different editions, different writers, different design philosophies, etc.

You can test your hypotheses against the units that have come out in the past, look at SM. Why are Reivers and Inceptors worse than Assault Centurions? We don't have insight into GW's stock of Assault Centurions, but we do know that Reivers and Inceptors are newer kits. You might be right in this one case that GW has just kept Flayed Ones in the competitive basement in order to curb demand of a product they are less interested in selling compared to their newer Necron kits, but you see people going out and buying the insane FW units all the time, which probably yields a higher return on investment for GW than if they sold the cheaper Citadel miniatures, if GW makes plastic Flayed Ones they'll probably be cheaper, why wait when they can just sell a bunch of the expensive finecast Flayed Ones? We don't even have the slightest rumours of Flayed Ones coming out in the next two years, so that's 4+ years of preparation for a big Flayed Ones sale?

You asked why I claim expertise and then proffer your own repeated excursions into the activity. I don’t have any expertise, so feel free to dismiss whatever you feel like on claim of authority. I’d suggest if you think an idea is worth examination, that can be true even without expertise. In a similar vein, however, I simply cannot accept the fact that you’ve written a bunch of (probably excellent!) proposed ruleset as sufficient expertise to be dismissive of conflicting discussion on the subject. I do really appreciate your excitement about the hobby and this faction though—it’s superfans like you who really support this game for the rest of us with quality extracurricular content, analysis, and help.

You were the one that claimed I was so unknowledgeable that I couldn't even see how little I know. I did not say that when I said you were overanalyzing, I just think you're looking at things from the wrong point of view, not because I think you are stupid or because GW isn't trying their best, but because game balance is hard and even with extensive theory-crafting and playtesting things almost always turn out wrong in some percentage of the things you implement into your game. My thought on the matter of Flayed Ones is that a simpler explanation is probably the right one. I don't claim to know that your thought of it being a conspiracy or some elevated level of balance is wrong for certain, I'm just posting a simple explanation and saying that according to Occam's Razor my theory is generally more likely to be correct because I'm not making any assumptions except that GW don't have a perfect testing apparatus. It's like when physicists measured the speed of some particle and it went faster than light according to their first calculations, it could be that our laws of physics are fundamentally flawed or maybe the testing or computing mechanism is flawed. According to rumours and out of house playtesters GW's testing apparatus is flawed. We know A is true and that can cause C, but you argue that B is the cause or part of the cause in this instance. Something we cannot verify, except maybe if GW come out with a plastic kit and errata the cost of Flayed Ones within a week to make them competitive.

You raise a great clarification question around what I meant about balancing around a faction philosophy. I’m glad you asked, since this was what I was trying to describe in the first post, and clearly did so quite poorly, since this is now my third post!

I truly do love discussing things and I did not mean anything negative with my first reply and your take was interesting. I don't think your post was bad or stupid and perfect clarity can never be achieved in a written medium, see the 40K You Make Da Call forum if you want your daily dose of insanity.

Spoiler:

When designing a Codex for Faction you have quite a few questions you need to answer first before you begin: Why should this Faction exist? How will it be different from the other factions that already exist?

The answer can be “it will only look different, but it’s rules will be identical to [another faction]”. For a while, some of the SM chapters were like this, even! It can work, but don’t expect too much excitement about it because people like Differentiation, and it is far more powerful to have deep differentiation than simply superficial.

If you have decided to make the Faction mechanically distinct, you next need to ask some fluffy questions to guide later decisions: How will the mechanics reflect the chosen areas of distinction you’ve chosen for this Faction? How will players be presented with options that make them feel engaged with the army’s flavor? How will opponents playing against this faction experience the mechanic distinction?

To answer these, you need to be rather robust in understanding the faction’s fluff: what does this faction care about? What does it oppose? What drives it? How does it solve problems? What does it excel at and what does it do poorly? These are important, since they help you answer the former questions in a way which gives Mechanical Distinction.

With a game as mechanically dense as WH40K you thankfully have TONS of different knobs and levers you can pull to make these mechanic distinctions. At the model level, you can use relative changes in BS, Strength, and AP to demonstrate competence or incompetence. You can use Toughness and Saves to demonstrate resilience.

At the Faction level, however, you should have a coherent plan to reflect the Faction distinctions you set up earlier in the armies selection choices. If you have a “fast hit and run” faction and a “tough defensive” faction, it would be inappropriate to give them each all the exact same options at the same costs and availability.

This is where you suggested you can use selection restrictions to make these distinctions. Presumably you would either forbid or restrict how many bikers the defensive force could take and vice versa. This is definitely a good knob you can use! It’s also fairly realistic to our own human experience of opportunity costs in military investment.

But there are absolutely other tools at your disposal! Remember one of the questions: “What is this Faction good at? What is it bad at?” We didn’t give that level of detail in the fast/defensive example earlier (a good reason to make sure your faction philosophy design document is thorough—especially for larger design teams working collaboratively).

Let’s pretend the defensive faction, by virtue of focusing on “defending their homeland from raiding attacks” has invested in fortifications at the expense of R&D into other options, and so are bad at designing motorcycle engines or have inefficient antigrav tech. Here rather than giving both factions the same options at the same cost and merely saying the defensive army can only have fewer of them, you could instead reflect the worse tech as an inefficiency in the production of the same output, and increase the relative point cost for the same option for the defensive army. Or maybe they don’t have the same option at all, but for the same cost they have a weaker version. Or maybe they have the same costs and availability, but you make the drivers less experienced and worsen their WS and BS.

Spoiler:

You can also reflect this phenomenon by designing in some more complexity: if you establish a baseline ratio of point:effectiveness, you can set up different bands (I’m avoiding using the term ‘tier’ here!) of Units, like: Cheap, Midrange, Powerful. So, cheaper and weaker units, more moderately costed and powerful units, and expensive powerful units. In an idealized case, with equal points, they would kill each other identically as quickly; but that’s unlikely.

So returning to the example, another permutation would be to give more Bands of options in the Fast Attack slot to the hit and run faction than to the Defensive faction. Or maybe not give any cheap or powerful options to the Defensive faction. Etc.

While you’re right that the point cost approach can be difficult. It’s one of the things people point to with frustration because players believe all like options should cost the same; but it’s simply not the case in a properly designed game with distinct factions. ALSO fair is to say it’s not the only tool either can you could try to design it without this option, but what a missed opportunity to reflect some deep flavor in the mechanics.

I enjoyed what you wrote. I think the problem with creating mechanically inferior units is that it won't say in Necron lore for example that "Doomsday Arks are gak because Necrons don't often like long-ranged weapons" or "Annihilation Barges are great because they play into Necrons strengths as a medium-range army" so when Timmy goes and buys one of each he won't necessarily know which is better. Timmy might also not play any of the units that you think should be the core of every Necron army, he might build his list entirely around Scarabs, Spyders and vehicles, unless you make it clear to him that this is a bad choice via the fluff or website info then how will he know? With White Scars you know to build around bikes, because the rules clearly incentivise that and the lore supports it. But White Scars still need to be able to compete with Iron Hands assuming both players play to their army's strengths because the fluff and website info won't promote one over the other.

 vict0988 wrote:

sieGermans wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

Spoiler:

sieGermans wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

sieGermans wrote:
From a design perspective, you’d prefer to have a tiered perspective in every slot type: FA, Elite, HS, etc. This gets modulated based on how you want to reflect certain Faction flavor elements. (For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones).

You definitely shouldn't make a unit pricier or worse just because it doesn't fit into your view of how an army should operate. You can limit the amount of that unit can be included in an army, make the unit sizes small, one per Detachment, one per other choice, but making the unit worse is unfun, especially because GW balance is hit and miss. Sometimes they may be pushing a unit or trying to limit how good a unit is, other times they've just done a poor job at balancing. So you can't say Elites are tier 1 Necron Fast Attack are tier 3 without saying some Necron Elites are tier 0 and some are tier 2 and some Fast Attack are tier 2 and some are tier 4. It won't say on the box whether a unit is tier 1 or tier 4, when balancing pts the most amount of people should be able to have fun with their armies as possible.

And then there’s our Elite slot. This is a total mess—which is pretty poor from a Faction differentiation perspective. If the idea is that Necrons are an ‘elite’ army with fewer, better guys this would be the slot to push, along with the Heavy slot. Instead, the tiers seem to be: FOs, then Praetorians and Lychguard, then C’tans. For shooting we have... the Stalker with the antisynergy of being null dynasty. Where are the Elite shooting low range and midrange options? Why are the low and midrange melee options so expensive for such poor performance.

However! This reveals the reason why FOs further suffer. In the modern design criteria, they should really be Troops. Their statline is basically “Warrior, but CC instead of shooting...” but if you took them out of the Elite slot, what will fill its place?

This glut of midrange, overlapping role options is part of the problem Necrons have in general, and why we get pushed to the extremes of running 6Ark3Scythe, because we have too many options in one spot, and are too anemic elsewhere.

FOs are Elites because of fluff. Troops are Troops to incentivise building armies with units that don't do crazy stuff or at least they do less crazy stuff than the Elites, they may be more restricted in weapons they bring or be less elite. Our bad elites are bad because they cost too many pts, you are way overanalyzing this. Doomsday Arks are good because they are pts-effective. There is no secret sauce there, the rest of the codex is just relatively overcosted. Maybe people would run Flayed One bombs, you can add as many rules as you want but at the end of the day you just have to look at the value to cost ratio of different units and take the units that provide the most value to your list and playstyle. Instead of fiddling with giving units various abilities or changing their combat roles you should just change their pts and be done with it. Except when you have a problem with their gameplay, I don't think Monoliths are fun as-is, I don't think they evoke Necron technology when I've played with them, so I think their rules need to be changed. How does making Flayed Ones into Troops evoke more or a Necron feel, how is the gameplay better? Well it's better because some Dynasties use a lot of Flayed Ones, so changing them into Troops is a good idea from a thematic stand-point. Changing FOs to Troops to make them more viable outside of casual settings is a waste of time when you can just cut their pts to 15 and people might start to experiment with them competitively or 12 and people take them in moderate amounts or all the way down to 9 and bam people spam them.

One side note: it isn’t necessarily the case that Necrons are MEANT to be an Elite concept. It could be that the idea is Necrons are a relentless horde model. In this case then troops and Character or Machinery support would be the name of the game, and we need quite a few more options in these slots.

That would ruin the theme of the army. Fielding tonnes of similar models is a thing that I enjoy, at least in my Troops choices. If Deathmarks and Flayed Ones were Troops and fielded 2x5 Deathmarks, 2x5 Flayed, 1x20 Warriors, 1x10 Immortals that wouldn't be as satisfying to me as fielding 6x10 Immortals or 3x20 Warriors. Cool auxiliary options are cool, but the soulless core should remain an option. I don't see the need for a dozen more kinds of medium-range infantry or more Elite options. I really don't need any more Necrons models, maybe in 5 years I'd want something. For now, I'd like some more Character sculpts and a posable Transcendent C'tan with a couple of different heads and arms. What SM got with their 6 different kinds of Intercessors is not appealing to me. 6 different kinds of Crypteks would and maybe that just means I want Necrons to be pushed into a HQ direction instead of a Troops or Elites direction from your perspective an army having a slant. IMO the Necrons HQ slot isn't just relative to the rest of the slots, it's tiny, held up only by a very nice selection of unique units.

I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options.

You're overanalyzing some more here, GW are mostly just bad at balance and once in a while they sneak in an obvious or not so obvious buff or nerf to push new product. Consider the Imperium, they have the best chaff and the best Titanic units, Necrons having similarly diverse options would not hurt the game. Doomsday Arks might get relatively stronger with a chaff squad on the same tier as Infantry Squads, but the price would just have to be adjusted.

Describing the incredibly facile and overly simplistic run-down I gave as “OVER-analyzing” has undertones of Dunning-Kruger. Just because the outcome is poor doesn’t mean GW doesn’t put a lot of effort and thought into internally balancing these systems. I guarantee you I’m probably wrong 100 different ways, but it won’t be because I’ve analyzed it TOO deeply.

I think the proof of the pudding is in the eating: FOs are overcosted or underperforming for their cost and probably in the wrong force organization. And they have been for a while. And I am willing to provide a testable hypothesis: they will only be seriously re-tooled if/when they become available in plastic. I have 30 metal ones I’ve painted, ready to go, so hopefully I’m wrong!

Occam's razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.
Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Hitchens' razor: "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence."

What is more simple, "GW is bad at balancing" or "I do kind of also think it’s possible that Necrons are (inappropriately) being designed for both options, or have been historically anyway. This would be problematic as you’d end up offering an Elite force access to good chafe, and simultaneously be offering a Horde force access to good Elite options."

Why do you believe that GW are waiting to buff Flayed Ones for a plastic release? Obliterators got a new kit and then they were nerfed.

What is your proof of any of your theories? Why do you claim expertise on the subject of game balance and GW's corporate culture? From the rumours I've heard, GW has a truly terrible testing methodology (throw a bit of everything on the table and tell us how you feel about it). Have you tried balancing a codex? Why do you claim my assessment that the pts are just off to be flawed? I've written a fandex for Necrons that I used a couple of times, then I wrote another codex for Necrons I used several dozen times and iterated upon several times, I've also written and iterated upon half a dozen other fandexes for other factions. Pts is the ultimate decider, I don't care if you have a unit that has an ability that lets you win on a 2+, if it costs 2001 pts then you can't bring it to a 2k game.

I may have been ambiguous when I referred to tiers; that was referring to Quality assuming an equal application of points:effectiveness. I wasn’t referring to tier of competitiveness.

You said "For example, a ‘slow, plodding army’ may not have as many Fast Attack options, or may have pricier ones" so let's say Necrons are a ‘slow, plodding army’ and I want to give them as many FA options as HS options for some reason, I design Destroyers, Scarabs and Wraiths. Now I test them and find out they are worth 50, 13 and 50 pts, but you told me they need to have pricier Fast Attack options so I set their costs at 60, 20 and 60. Or do you mean to say that a ‘slow, plodding army’ should never have any fast cheap units like Scarabs? Now you talk of Quality, so do you instead mean Necrons should not have access to Wraiths and Destroyers because those are more elite or higher quality units?

First of all, I’d really appreciate a more civil tone. I’m happy to be wrong, and I’d love to explore where and how, but it’s pretty hard when you adopt such a vicious stance. I get ‘this is the internet’ but we can do/be better.

I don't believe it's uncivil to say that you are overanalyzing, I did find it uncivil when you invoked the Dunning-Kruger effect since you are thereby implying that I am so unknowledgeable about that which I am speaking that I don't even see how little I know. It's a thinly veiled way of saying "m8 you're an idiot you better shut up and listen to what I (an intellectual) am saying". This is also why I stated my amateur game-design credentials, which admittedly aren't worth three hats, but I do believe I know enough about game design and balance to say that I'm also aware of the difficulty of balancing a game, even with 99% pure intent and with a better balancing methodology balance mistakes still happen.

Occams’s Razor is philosophically problematic. In practice it is difficult to be sure that you have reduced an argument to its simplest form for comparison. This is a trap you fall into here. You compared the following:

“GW is bad at balancing” to “GW made a mistake in design”

That wasn't the argument I read, it doesn't matter whether GW has decided that Necrons are elite or chaff, either they intentionally made Flayed Ones overcosted because of a design decision or they accidentally made them overcosted because they made a mistake or they made them overcosted because they don't want to sell finecast Flayed Ones. Your argument for why they made that design decision to make Flayed Ones underpowered was that Necrons are neither designed to be elite or nor to be chaff. Every faction has good chaff and good elite units. Imperium has Infantry Squads and Bullgryn, Chaos has Plaguebearers and Rubric Squads, Necrons have Scarabs and Immortals.

I think it is unlikely that an absolute and permanent assessment of capability is more correct than a performance assessment on a specific set of actions.

You ask why I thought GW is waiting for a plastic release before buffing FOs; which suggests my post was written poorly since that’s one thing I was talking about directly. Rather than repeat myself a second time, I’m happy to drop it. I would point out that my point wasn’t that it was a necessary precondition, but rather would be evidence to support the overall point.

You ask for “proof of my theories” and that’s what I was offering by providing testable hypotheses. Admittedly, they are Observation studies rather than Retrospective studies, but we get enough of the latter ad nauseam on these forums, and it’s a bit flawed anyway since there’s so many confounding variables between different editions, different writers, different design philosophies, etc.

You can test your hypotheses against the units that have come out in the past, look at SM. Why are Reivers and Inceptors worse than Assault Centurions? We don't have insight into GW's stock of Assault Centurions, but we do know that Reivers and Inceptors are newer kits. You might be right in this one case that GW has just kept Flayed Ones in the competitive basement in order to curb demand of a product they are less interested in selling compared to their newer Necron kits, but you see people going out and buying the insane FW units all the time, which probably yields a higher return on investment for GW than if they sold the cheaper Citadel miniatures, if GW makes plastic Flayed Ones they'll probably be cheaper, why wait when they can just sell a bunch of the expensive finecast Flayed Ones? We don't even have the slightest rumours of Flayed Ones coming out in the next two years, so that's 4+ years of preparation for a big Flayed Ones sale?

You asked why I claim expertise and then proffer your own repeated excursions into the activity. I don’t have any expertise, so feel free to dismiss whatever you feel like on claim of authority. I’d suggest if you think an idea is worth examination, that can be true even without expertise. In a similar vein, however, I simply cannot accept the fact that you’ve written a bunch of (probably excellent!) proposed ruleset as sufficient expertise to be dismissive of conflicting discussion on the subject. I do really appreciate your excitement about the hobby and this faction though—it’s superfans like you who really support this game for the rest of us with quality extracurricular content, analysis, and help.

You were the one that claimed I was so unknowledgeable that I couldn't even see how little I know. I did not say that when I said you were overanalyzing, I just think you're looking at things from the wrong point of view, not because I think you are stupid or because GW isn't trying their best, but because game balance is hard and even with extensive theory-crafting and playtesting things almost always turn out wrong in some percentage of the things you implement into your game. My thought on the matter of Flayed Ones is that a simpler explanation is probably the right one. I don't claim to know that your thought of it being a conspiracy or some elevated level of balance is wrong for certain, I'm just posting a simple explanation and saying that according to Occam's Razor my theory is generally more likely to be correct because I'm not making any assumptions except that GW don't have a perfect testing apparatus. It's like when physicists measured the speed of some particle and it went faster than light according to their first calculations, it could be that our laws of physics are fundamentally flawed or maybe the testing or computing mechanism is flawed. According to rumours and out of house playtesters GW's testing apparatus is flawed. We know A is true and that can cause C, but you argue that B is the cause or part of the cause in this instance. Something we cannot verify, except maybe if GW come out with a plastic kit and errata the cost of Flayed Ones within a week to make them competitive.

You raise a great clarification question around what I meant about balancing around a faction philosophy. I’m glad you asked, since this was what I was trying to describe in the first post, and clearly did so quite poorly, since this is now my third post!

I truly do love discussing things and I did not mean anything negative with my first reply and your take was interesting. I don't think your post was bad or stupid and perfect clarity can never be achieved in a written medium, see the 40K You Make Da Call forum if you want your daily dose of insanity.

Spoiler:

When designing a Codex for Faction you have quite a few questions you need to answer first before you begin: Why should this Faction exist? How will it be different from the other factions that already exist?

The answer can be “it will only look different, but it’s rules will be identical to [another faction]”. For a while, some of the SM chapters were like this, even! It can work, but don’t expect too much excitement about it because people like Differentiation, and it is far more powerful to have deep differentiation than simply superficial.

If you have decided to make the Faction mechanically distinct, you next need to ask some fluffy questions to guide later decisions: How will the mechanics reflect the chosen areas of distinction you’ve chosen for this Faction? How will players be presented with options that make them feel engaged with the army’s flavor? How will opponents playing against this faction experience the mechanic distinction?

To answer these, you need to be rather robust in understanding the faction’s fluff: what does this faction care about? What does it oppose? What drives it? How does it solve problems? What does it excel at and what does it do poorly? These are important, since they help you answer the former questions in a way which gives Mechanical Distinction.

With a game as mechanically dense as WH40K you thankfully have TONS of different knobs and levers you can pull to make these mechanic distinctions. At the model level, you can use relative changes in BS, Strength, and AP to demonstrate competence or incompetence. You can use Toughness and Saves to demonstrate resilience.

At the Faction level, however, you should have a coherent plan to reflect the Faction distinctions you set up earlier in the armies selection choices. If you have a “fast hit and run” faction and a “tough defensive” faction, it would be inappropriate to give them each all the exact same options at the same costs and availability.

This is where you suggested you can use selection restrictions to make these distinctions. Presumably you would either forbid or restrict how many bikers the defensive force could take and vice versa. This is definitely a good knob you can use! It’s also fairly realistic to our own human experience of opportunity costs in military investment.

But there are absolutely other tools at your disposal! Remember one of the questions: “What is this Faction good at? What is it bad at?” We didn’t give that level of detail in the fast/defensive example earlier (a good reason to make sure your faction philosophy design document is thorough—especially for larger design teams working collaboratively).

Let’s pretend the defensive faction, by virtue of focusing on “defending their homeland from raiding attacks” has invested in fortifications at the expense of R&D into other options, and so are bad at designing motorcycle engines or have inefficient antigrav tech. Here rather than giving both factions the same options at the same cost and merely saying the defensive army can only have fewer of them, you could instead reflect the worse tech as an inefficiency in the production of the same output, and increase the relative point cost for the same option for the defensive army. Or maybe they don’t have the same option at all, but for the same cost they have a weaker version. Or maybe they have the same costs and availability, but you make the drivers less experienced and worsen their WS and BS.

Spoiler:

You can also reflect this phenomenon by designing in some more complexity: if you establish a baseline ratio of point:effectiveness, you can set up different bands (I’m avoiding using the term ‘tier’ here!) of Units, like: Cheap, Midrange, Powerful. So, cheaper and weaker units, more moderately costed and powerful units, and expensive powerful units. In an idealized case, with equal points, they would kill each other identically as quickly; but that’s unlikely.

So returning to the example, another permutation would be to give more Bands of options in the Fast Attack slot to the hit and run faction than to the Defensive faction. Or maybe not give any cheap or powerful options to the Defensive faction. Etc.

While you’re right that the point cost approach can be difficult. It’s one of the things people point to with frustration because players believe all like options should cost the same; but it’s simply not the case in a properly designed game with distinct factions. ALSO fair is to say it’s not the only tool either can you could try to design it without this option, but what a missed opportunity to reflect some deep flavor in the mechanics.

I enjoyed what you wrote. I think the problem with creating mechanically inferior units is that it won't say in Necron lore for example that "Doomsday Arks are gak because Necrons don't often like long-ranged weapons" or "Annihilation Barges are great because they play into Necrons strengths as a medium-range army" so when Timmy goes and buys one of each he won't necessarily know which is better. Timmy might also not play any of the units that you think should be the core of every Necron army, he might build his list entirely around Scarabs, Spyders and vehicles, unless you make it clear to him that this is a bad choice via the fluff or website info then how will he know? With White Scars you know to build around bikes, because the rules clearly incentivise that and the lore supports it. But White Scars still need to be able to compete with Iron Hands assuming both players play to their army's strengths because the fluff and website info won't promote one over the other.

Really great points.

I should have mentioned that presumably any designed deficits should be offset by designed benefits (or like-deficits in the other factions’ units) elsewhere. The Codex should be internally balanced and externally balanced.

But you’re absolutely right: it doesn’t say on the box “this unit has been gimped because your faction should be bad at this.” However, while I agree that people may not know this, coming back to Flayed Ones, isn’t this problem already happening anyway? We all accept that White Scar bikers should probably be better than IH Bikers. This is the central theme to Casual v. Competitive list building already—a Casual list specifically chooses army compositions based on criteria that may not be the Faction’s optimal configuration.

Plus people learn through experience anyway. It doesn’t say “don’t field 2000 of only Doom Scythes” (setting aside the Rule of 3 which was imposed because sometimes 2000 of something is too good!), and even though that would be terrible, we’re okay with letting a hypothetical Timmy foolishly purchase 10 of them.

All of this isn’t a defense of how poor the Necron Codex is performing: I think there are some really bad mistakes both internally and compared to other codices. I’m simply trying to suggest it may not be the case that all of our units should be identical in point cost and competitiveness to other armies. So long as other elements work to offset them, poor performers or overcosted units in our Codex are totally fine from a healthy design perspective, and actually help create a compelling theme.