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There seems to be a lot of Necron related tactics queries on this board lately, so I thought I'd take a moment to give my thoughts on the subject.

How to compete with Necrons.

There is a lot of talk these days about how poor the Necron Codex is, and how broken(in a bad way) it is and why the soulless automaton Warriors should be all but ignored when they rise from their tombs to harvest the living. I would say that this is simply not the case. I’ve been playing Necrons for several years and I have learned a few tricks along the way that allow me to hold my own against what are traditionally tough opponents for our metallic friends.

Now before I get into talking about list building I just want to touch on a few points regarding tactics. First of all, close combat is not where you ever want to be unless you are certain you are going to win and not be counter charged. The Necrons have some of the greatest mobility in the game, and if you want to win games with them you’re going to need to be taking advantage of this, and in so doing you’ll find that your Warriors and Immortals are going to have the opportunity to get the drop on your opponent’s infantry at times. If you see some Fire Warriors, Guardsmen, Guardians or Pathfinders within 14.99 inches of your Monolith Portal feel free to chop them up with your Gauss Flayer’s close combat attachment. That said… I would tell you to never assault any type of Marine, or anything that’s even marginally good in assault. Just stay away from them. Don’t try to rapid fire at Blood Angels or a large group of Boyz, that’s what your particle whip is for. Just stay the hell away from them. This took me so long to learn, I hope it is a lesson that a beginner would take to heart at the beginning of their journey with Necrons. Stay out of assault range in 90% of cases.

I mentioned mobility earlier, and I would say that this ties directly into avoiding Phase Out. This relies heavily on your ability to be on one side of the table where the Ork Boyz are about to charge your Warriors and remove your entire army from the game and suddenly being on the other side of the table and sitting on an objective. I personally never leave home without the Veil of Darkness. You think the Space Marines Librarians have something fancy with the Gate of Infinity? How about a Gate of Infinity with unlimited range and that doesn’t require a psychic check and doesn’t kill a member of the squad if you roll doubles? Those Nobs getting a little too close to a squad of your warriors? Suddenly you’re 60 inches way from them. As a side note, I’ve seen 10 Immortals used in this way to devastating effect. Not only does it allow you to keep a squad of Necrons that should be above your Phase Out threshold out of danger of most assaulting units but you can lay down 20 S5 AP4 Gauss Shots at a 24 inch range. I don’t personally use this tactic with the Immortals but I acknowledge its strength so I thought I should mention it. I like to save those points I’d spend on Immortals for more Destroyers so I find that jumping a squad of 10 or so Warriors around the board keeps me from phasing out just as well, and they’re also scoring so I prefer that in objective missions. The other wonderful tool for mobility that the Necrons have is the Monolith Portal. Again, those Blood Angels getting a little too close for comfort? Make a wall of Monoliths, turn them away from the advancing troops and teleport your warriors into a safe little table corner with 6 inches of living metal between them and the nasty assault unit. For this to work, you’ll need to think about “castling”.

When deploying my Necrons, I will generally keep my Warriors Squads in Reserve. Since I know I’ll be doing this, in a Seize Ground type mission I will place as many objectives within 12” of my table edge as possible so that my Warriors can wander on later in the game and claim them. I will put my Monoliths near a table corner with my C’Tan (I prefer the Nightbringer, YMMV, more on that later) along with 2 or three squadrons of Destroyers. This will allow me to advance if I feel so inclined, but more often, to wall off a corner for my Warriors to hide in if the situation calls for it. Once the castle is complete, with two Particle Whips blasting away at anything that comes within 24”, Destroyers lighting up anything within 36”, and a Star Vampire waiting to curb-stomp anything that tries to assault the Monolith, you’re in decent shape. One important thing to note here though is that you want to make sure you don’t leave any room in your castle for an outflanking unit to sneak in there and ruin your day. You might think that this would cripple your ability to claim objectives but, late in the game (and if you were smart with setting objectives), you’ll be surprised at how between your Reserved Warriors and Veil of Darkness teleporting Warrior trick how many you might end up controlling. This is particularly true if your opponent decided to try and get into your castle and ended up on the wrong side of the Particle Whip/Nightbringer tag-team.

Why do I prefer the Nightbringer? It’s pretty simple, really. I think the Etheric Tempest’s ability to make it impossible for Ork Boyz and Seer Councils and little Tyranid gribblies to assault my lines is incredible, and S10 that ignores any kind of save is really nice against things like Thunderwolf Cavalry. The Deceiver has his good points as well, The Grand Illusion lets you set up good fire lanes for your Destroyers on the first turn and the fact that you can’t keep him in assault if he doesn’t want to stay is really handy. Again, I feel this depends more on your play style than whether one is better than the other. Try them both out and decide for yourself!

If you’re going to make a Necron list, you need to think a bit about redundancy in units and its effect on WBB. I tend to bring several of the same unit, as WBB doesn’t function unless there’s another model of the same type within 6 inches. Whatever unit you’re bringing (Destroyers, Immortals, Flayed Ones), if you are going to bring one unit, bring two and keep them close together. Here’s a 2000 point list that I’ve had great success with in the past.

Nightbringer
Lord: Veil of Darkness, Resurrection Orb

10 Warriors
10 Warriors

4 Destroyers
4 Destroyers
4 Destroyers

Monolith
Monolith

If you look at the list you can see how you could follow the tactics I’ve outlined above, and if you think about it, 36 destroyer shots a turn really isn’t shabby. If you are just starting out with Necrons, I hope that this advice and this list will give you a little food for thought and with a bit of practice I’m sure you’ll be out there surprising people when you hand them their butt with your “broken and outdated codex.”

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Did I miss anything? Do you have any questions? Feel free to bring it up! I'm happy to discuss it.

This is a really descriptive and helpful tactica, good job! It's nice that atleast SOMEONE is paying attention to one of the ignored armies.

Hey thanks, buddy!

Glad you liked it.

@Monster Rain Glad to see you're writing for your 'Crons again. I'd love to see them come out of their dusty tombs again.

@All From the other side of the table I can testify that the Castle-lith tactic works very well.

The monolith probably the one unit in the Necron dex that got a major boost from 5th ed. Not only in that vehicles can longer be destroyed on a glance, but also from the proliferation and over-reliance on melta to bust tanks (monoliths laugh at melta). Attacking two of those things with a C'Tan lurking nearby is a tall order. Killing all three would take some kind of act of god (or a manticore, a serious lascannon battery and a bit of luck).

Even if you do manage to remove them, they'll probably have taken such a fearsome toll on your army that what forces you do have left will be either out of position or useless. Therefore the whole goal as an opponent is to force a phase out by knocking down destroyers in the early game and then finding a way to get to the warriors in the mid-late game. If you can kill this army down to 8 models (not including the monolith and nightbringer) then it goes away and you auto-win.

Of course against Monster Rain this means that I have to go through aforementioned monoliths and c'tan to get to those warriors. It is that added difficulty of killing the warriors, not the lethality of the destroyers, c'tan and monoliths, that really makes this strategy so dangerous.

In essence this strategy attempts to take the most glaring weakness of Necrons in 5th - the fragility of warriors and the phase outs that result from losing them - and remove it from the equation. What you have left is an army full of useful special rules that can destroy an unprepared player and give even a veteran necron-fighter a really really hard time.

Droofus wrote:@Monster Rain Glad to see you're writing for your 'Crons again. I'd love to see them come out of their dusty tombs again.

Oh you will. The more I've been thinking about this the more I miss playing them.

Droofus wrote:@All From the other side of the table I can testify that the Castle-lith tactic works very well.

From you, Mr. 'Ard Boyz Finalist, I'll take that as a compliment.

Droofus wrote:The monolith probably the one unit in the Necron dex that got a major boost from 5th ed. Not only in that vehicles can longer be destroyed on a glance, but also from the proliferation and over-reliance on melta to bust tanks (monoliths laugh at melta). Attacking two of those things with a C'Tan lurking nearby is a tall order. Killing all three would take some kind of act of god (or a manticore, a serious lascannon battery and a bit of luck).

That's true, and in instances such as these where there's a possibility of such a thing happening target priority is going to be a huge factor. When I play my Necrons I really try to neutralize threats to my Monoliths as soon as possible so that they can do their job as playing goalie along with the C'Tan for my warriors. In the situation you described, for example, I would really suggest shooting at the Manticore until it was going to be quiet for at least a turn and then focus on the lascannon teams. Of course, where there's a manticore there's probably Vendettas but I'm sure you see my point.

Droofus wrote:Even if you do manage to remove them, they'll probably have taken such a fearsome toll on your army that what forces you do have left will be either out of position or useless. Therefore the whole goal as an opponent is to force a phase out by knocking down destroyers in the early game and then finding a way to get to the warriors in the mid-late game. If you can kill this army down to 8 models (not including the monolith and nightbringer) then it goes away and you auto-win.

Of course against Monster Rain this means that I have to go through aforementioned monoliths and c'tan to get to those warriors. It is that added difficulty of killing the warriors, not the lethality of the destroyers, c'tan and monoliths, that really makes this strategy so dangerous.

Second only to their mobility, the toughness of the Necrons is something that you should lean on. There aren't many armies out there that you can leave a majority of your units standing out in the open to eat all kinds of high strength, low AP fire and not pay dearly for it. The Monolith and the C'Tan are ridiculously durable, and even Warriors don't worry so much about shooting between the prevalence of cover saves and WBB (which is augmented by the Monolith Portal, another reason to love this vehicle).

Droofus wrote:In essence this strategy attempts to take the most glaring weakness of Necrons in 5th - the fragility of warriors and the phase outs that result from losing them - and remove it from the equation. What you have left is an army full of useful special rules that can destroy an unprepared player and give even a veteran necron-fighter a really really hard time.

Wow, you summed that up really nicely. Wish I had thought of putting it like that.

Say what you will about the basilisk, but when your opponent castles up behind a lith wall, nothing beats ID'ing Ap 3 against Necrons.

The thing about castles is that generally, they keep troops closer together than they should be. Speaking from an IG perspective, clustered troops means dead troops, even if they get back up.

The keep warriors in reserve and then grab objectives ploy certainly has merit, but IG in the current metagame generally means that even hiding behind a lith won't save you.

Irdiumstern wrote:Say what you will about the basilisk, but when your opponent castles up behind a lith wall, nothing beats ID'ing Ap 3 against Necrons.

By my calculations the Monoliths can make a wall that's impassable by enemy models that's 18 inches across. That's 2 inches from each table edge, 6 inches for each monolith and 2 inches between them, being that you can't move within 1" of enemy models. I just set that up on the table and it leaves quite a bit of space for spreading out. Also, if you factor in the Resurrection Orb, you'll only be permanently killing about half of what the Basilisk knocks down, and less than that if they are recycled through the Monolith Portal.

All that said, yes, Basilisks hurt. The other consolation is that they scatter more when shooting indirect though. I'll take the trade-off, personally.

Very nice tactica!

That list is about as good as you can make Crons in this edition.

The funny thing about Crons is that in good hands they good pretty good between 2,000 and 2,500 points.

My tournament Missile Wolves BARELY beat a list like this at Ard Boyz Semis in a KP mission as I had literally more than double the KPs and 3 of his were Monoliths.

The issue that I have with crons is that against a smart player, they will focus on killing your infantry and phase you out. Ignore the liths (I only kill them in CC typically) and stay away from the Nightbringer if you can and you will generally be OK focusing on the Destroyers.

But, good on you if you are doing well with them. I love Crons and will certainly get as army of them when their new book comes out if they are decent (which judging by all other 5th books, they will be).

@Iridumstern
I love Bassies, still! I use one in almost every game. For its points it is a great tank.

Reecius wrote:The issue that I have with crons is that against a smart player, they will focus on killing your infantry and phase you out. Ignore the liths (I only kill them in CC typically) and stay away from the Nightbringer if you can and you will generally be OK focusing on the Destroyers.

Oh believe me, I know this first hand.

The idea here is to make ignoring the Monoliths and staying away from the C'tan rather difficult, as they are between you and what you want to get at (Warriors, when they come in from reserve).

Reecius wrote:But, good on you if you are doing well with them. I love Crons and will certainly get as army of them when their new book comes out if they are decent (which judging by all other 5th books, they will be).

Oh I'm sure they'll be cheesy as hell! I can't wait!

One thing that I'm really looking forward to is getting rid of some of the clunkier rules in the current codex so there can be less discussion about how they are played and more time spent actually playing!

I agree.

I would love to see Flayed ones as troops with rending and fleet.

Pariahs as Necrons.

Wraiths with power weapons.

All Necrons as stubborn 8 or 9.

A points reduction on a lot of the units.

And a number of other changes. Crons could be very good, they were great in 4th, the perfect beginner army. Hopefully they move back up to the top tier with the new book, which I bet they will!

Very nice tactica, similar to how I play.

Only problem I run into even using these tactics is the sheer variety of ways my enemy gets up to me.

As an example, when I play my brother ('nids) and try to castle, he just deep strikes right on me and ends up killing some troops. If I use a C'tan, he has instant kill stuff that wrecks me which make no sense since shouldn't star gods have Eternal Warrior?

Also he doesn't have a problem smashing monoliths with his str 10 cannon.

Seems that even with good tactica necrons can only go so far.

Destroyer wrote:Very nice tactica, similar to how I play.

Thanks man!

Destroyer wrote:As an example, when I play my brother ('nids) and try to castle, he just deep strikes right on me and ends up killing some troops.

Even through the Monolith Wall? How is he doing that? Can you give me more detail?

Destroyer wrote:If I use a C'tan, he has instant kill stuff that wrecks me which make no sense since shouldn't star gods have Eternal Warrior?

They do against Wraith Cannons. Who and What is ID'ing your C'Tan?

Destroyer wrote:Also he doesn't have a problem smashing monoliths with his str 10 cannon.

Yeah, long distance S10 is a bummer. Tau have the same edge, but then your Warriors can beat the bejeezus out of their troops in CC so that's a decent trade-off.

Destroyer wrote:Seems that even with good tactica necrons can only go so far.

To an extent, yeah I think that's true. They kind of suffer from the points cost of their units, really. They are facing off against units that are generally better at CC than them that don't cost nearly as much. I still contend that they're one of the most mobile armies out there though, so that mitigates their weaknesses somewhat in my opinion.

If a unit has a 12" charge they can go between the Liths as a part of their charge movement. Other than that, due to the 1" rule, it would be very difficult to get into assault with a castled cron force in the board corner.

That's a good call, actually. TWC and Raveners could be problematic even for the castle.

I guess in that instance you'd just park the Nightbringer in that space when they started getting close to their charge range, or tighten up the space and have a smaller area behind the Monolith wall.

Yeah, since most units can't charge far enough to engage a unit behind the Liths it isn't an issue, but beasts can cover the distance. Not that it comes up that often, but when it does it's good to know. If you make the gap between Liths too small for the unit's base to pass through, then you are fine.

It's also nice if you set it up with your warriors in area terrain. Having to roll can significantly shorten the charging distance, even for cavalry.

Monster Rain wrote: Even through the Monolith Wall? How is he doing that? Can you give me more detail?

Aside from the usual outflankers like genestealers there's this big one that deepstrikes in and kills stuff in the same turn, I think it's the tervigon or something. It can land on units like the monolith and pushes stuff around. It deals like str 6 and has a low AP so my warriors don't get a save or a WBB roll.

Monster Rain wrote:They do against Wraith Cannons. Who and What is ID'ing your C'Tan?

Bone swords and implant attack. Also some of his powers screws my Nightbringer up badly like the one that makes him have WS 1 BS 1 for the turn and attacking last.

Monster Rain wrote:To an extent, yeah I think that's true. They kind of suffer from the points cost of their units, really. They are facing off against units that are generally better at CC than them that don't cost nearly as much. I still contend that they're one of the most mobile armies out there though, so that mitigates their weaknesses somewhat in my opinion.

Well in 5th ed CC is the way to go. Also, every race has pretty much been give 10x more ways to get into CC so...
Whatever though, I love necrons too much to care about metagame.

Destroyer wrote:

Monster Rain wrote: Even through the Monolith Wall? How is he doing that? Can you give me more detail?

Aside from the usual outflankers like genestealers there's this big one that deepstrikes in and kills stuff in the same turn, I think it's the tervigon or something. It can land on units like the monolith and pushes stuff around. It deals like str 6 and has a low AP so my warriors don't get a save or a WBB roll.

AP doesn't affect WBB though.

You should be getting your roll.

Monster Rain wrote:AP doesn't affect WBB though.

You should be getting your roll.

Normally yes unless they don't get a save in CC which happens in this case.

Right, the template is AP3 so you'd get WBB from that.

In CC you're correct, you wouldn't get to self repair without a Res Orb.

Yeah people always think WBB works like FNP. Ap 1 and 2 don't bother the crons!

I don't know where that idea comes from.

It's a surprisingly strong list. Lost to it in one of our local league finals; last year, IIRC. Just beat it in the Ard Boyz finals this year, in part because my opponent decided to charge Abaddon with The Deceiver.

Yeah, I nearly lost to a similar list in Ard boyz semis, but my opponent played poorly, trying to engage me head on instead of taking out my easy KPs. My list was brutal, too. In good hands, the weakest army can be powerful.

Nice Tactica Monster Rain.

My next army will be Necron, once the new dex is done. It'll be interesting to see what they do with them.

nice tactic!!! Never faced something similar anyway...
My SM list would never be able to take down the monoliths (I rely on meltas :( )and getting to the warriors would be difficult...
My green tide orks maybe will be able... How this list go against an army with so many models that the monoliths wouldn't be able to kill enough? The nightbringer is a bad beast but you do not need to kill him....

punkow wrote:nice tactic!!! Never faced something similar anyway...
My SM list would never be able to take down the monoliths (I rely on meltas :( )and getting to the warriors would be difficult...
My green tide orks maybe will be able... How this list go against an army with so many models that the monoliths wouldn't be able to kill enough? The nightbringer is a bad beast but you do not need to kill him....

With 36 (+D6 when you're within 12" of the liths) gauss shots coming at you plus three blast weapons every turn I would think would weed out your mob pretty quickly. Not to mention another 10 - 20 from the warriors when/if you get close enough. That's a lot of gauss...

yeah... but for a 2000 points green tide....
36 shots (24 hit, 18-20 wounds, KFF so 12-13 losses) + 3 blasts (covering ... 5 orks each in the best scenario if the Ork player is wise and keep them not too much clustered so let's say 12 wounds so 8 losses)...
We reach 20-23 dead orks for turn... When I field green tide (using bases cause I haven't so many minis, but maybe someone else do) at 2000 points, I have 150 orks... 20 deads for turn isn't so much... and normally you need 3 turns to reach the enemy with the first wave...
I've never seen how the nightbringer, and in general, Necrons, and even more in general, armies relying on heavy vehicles do in this kind of situation... I'm interested
cos' this necron tactic looks very very nice and if I meet this with my green tide (i'm building it : D ) what's gonna happen???

I didn't say it would be a cake walk - that's for sure...how many lith killing models do you plan on fielding? Any battlewagons with deaf rollas, power klaws or zapp gunz?

punkow wrote:yeah... but for a 2000 points green tide....
36 shots (24 hit, 18-20 wounds, KFF so 12-13 losses) + 3 blasts (covering ... 5 orks each in the best scenario if the Ork player is wise and keep them not too much clustered so let's say 12 wounds so 8 losses)...
We reach 20-23 dead orks for turn... When I field green tide (using bases cause I haven't so many minis, but maybe someone else do) at 2000 points, I have 150 orks... 20 deads for turn isn't so much... and normally you need 3 turns to reach the enemy with the first wave...
I've never seen how the nightbringer, and in general, Necrons, and even more in general, armies relying on heavy vehicles do in this kind of situation... I'm interested
cos' this necron tactic looks very very nice and if I meet this with my green tide (i'm building it : D ) what's gonna happen???

Sure, you definitely have enough boyz to weather the casulaties until you get there. But keep in mind that the nightbringer can make sure that none of your charges within 6" of him even happen (since orks are strength three). So what's the point of getting there just to be denied a charge?

With orks, killing the nightbringer is absolutely vital. And let me tell you, he can soak a LOT of loota fire.