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Hi... Today I witnessed a game of necrons vs blood angels... And Mephiston himself has won the game by killing everything on the table

So since I'm gonna play with crons on next tourny, I wonder how can I defend myself against Mephiston (as our gaming community is cc 16 people, so there is good chance that I'll have to play against him sooner or later)?!
I field nightbringer, but I fear that even he is no match in cc against Mephiston (with I7 s10 force weapon and my ld6 roll to prevent his to wound and to hit rerolls , I fear I won't even be able to hit him back )....

So any ideas? How to play against it? I field nightbringer, 20 warriors, 2 liths, lord w warscythe and 8 destroyers... He will have mephiston, few assault marines squads w FNP, death company and baal predators (more or less:p)...

Play Deceiver, he will never get the charge off on him.

You have few options. He'll kill a C'tan if he has his S10 power up pretty reliably. Remember that the force weapon counts as a power now, I believe. If you have the Deciever, he'll just charge other stuff.

So you can either try to shoot him to death, which is not easy given the flying and the 2+. Heavy Destroyers are good for this, but are likely to be targeted by the enemy. Everything else bounces off the 2+.

Or you can try to tarpit him, but he instant kills scarabs. So even the most impressive of conga lines is going to die fast. Spyders won't do much better and can be easily avoided.

Or you can field Pariahs and hope the LD 7 thing scares him away. But the 12" aura won't cover all that much space, you have to take enough that he won't shoot them to death and enough that Mephy can't just charge and kill them all anyway.

Necrons' only answer to big, fast CC monsters are C'tan, but Mephy beats those too. So chances are you just get owned.

Just an FYI, the nightbringer has a large blast ability in CC that does not require a to-hit roll, it ignores armour saves (and thus FNP) but it is only str 4. Still, it's probably better than 5 wasted to-hit attempts.

nightbringers ranged attack is AP2 as well, so no armour or FNP from that.

You could also try out the tomb stalker maybe. But really your best bet is probably just two kitted out lords and hope for the best.

Kevin949 wrote:Just an FYI, the nightbringer has a large blast ability in CC that does not require a to-hit roll, it ignores armour saves (and thus FNP) but it is only str 4. Still, it's probably better than 5 wasted to-hit attempts.

nightbringers ranged attack is AP2 as well, so no armour or FNP from that.

You could also try out the tomb stalker maybe. But really your best bet is probably just two kitted out lords and hope for the best.

You do realize that if it's str4 you need a 6 to wound him? It's more useless than those 5 other attacks.

Oh right, he's T6..I forgot about that.

Heavy Destroyers are really the only way to kill him. If you can keep him at arms length you can shoot him to death with them or use Particle Whips. Of course you'd only be chipping away at him slowly, and if your opponent is smart with him he'll have a cover save all the time.

There IS a way to Tarpit him though, although it relys on you keeping his other units tied up.

Try this.

Scarab Swarms + Destroyer Lord with Res-orb, revival, and Warscythe. If you can get only these against Mephiston in CC, he'll have to choose to either hit the Destroyer Lord who could kill him slowly with his Warscythe, or the fearless Scarab Swarms, which won't run away, plus he can't hit both. It's not always effective, especially if the Lord fails to revive, but it's really the only way to tarpit him in any sort of way.

But he'll be instant-deathing each one of those scarab swarms, meaning that he's inflicting the equivalent of three wounds with each attack that kills a scarab swarm (which should be pretty much all of them). This means that the Necron side will most certainly come out on the wrong side of the fight, and the Necron Lord will have to take an obscenely-modified Leadership check anyway. (As, unless I'm wrong, all squads on the losing side of a close-combat must take seperate Leadership Checks if their side loses the fight, regardless of which squad actually suffered wounds).

So I'm pretty sure either way the Necron Lord is gonna hoof it out of there, Mephiston is going to clean up the scarabs, and then he's going to be coming right at you again.

Do not give him a charge; Do your best to deny him that extra charge-distance for as long as possible.

Destroyers and Heavy Destroyers are fine. Massed Gauss and Massed lascannons will evenly pick him apart.

Crush the rest of the army that you can kill. Don't try and over-kill Mephy. If the firepower can be used better elsewhere, then do it.

There is no way to avoid Mephiston with Necrons. Honestly Necrons are not a competitive army right now.

If I had to give advice I would say try grayspark's idea and you can try and tarpit him or use Heavy Destroyers.

Other than that your !

Shelegelah wrote:But he'll be instant-deathing each one of those scarab swarms, meaning that he's inflicting the equivalent of three wounds with each attack that kills a scarab swarm (which should be pretty much all of them). This means that the Necron side will most certainly come out on the wrong side of the fight, and the Necron Lord will have to take an obscenely-modified Leadership check anyway. (As, unless I'm wrong, all squads on the losing side of a close-combat must take seperate Leadership Checks if their side loses the fight, regardless of which squad actually suffered wounds).

So I'm pretty sure either way the Necron Lord is gonna hoof it out of there, Mephiston is going to clean up the scarabs, and then he's going to be coming right at you again.

The Scarab Swarms and the Lord are one squad meaning they're all fearless. Swarms are cheap so you take a bunch. The Lord Gets in base contact.

He's an independent character so Mephiston has to either choose him or the swarms. Plus they're all fearless, so they won't run, and the Swarms can absorb the fearless saves.

I thought he could allocate against all units he's in base to base contact with. Regardless, he'll kill the swarms in 2 rounds tops and the lord in the third. The lord needs 4+ to hit and 5+ to wound, with all of 3 attacks. You average half a wound, and the scarabs can't even hurt him. 5+ to hit, 6+ to wound, 2+ saves? 50 odd attacks for one wound.

Lords won't do it. He'll force weapon one and kill the other. C'tan die to the force weapon too. He'll clean up a Necron army just like a Demon Prince or a Thunderwolf Lord cleans up one without a C'tan.

The Scarab Swarms and the Lord are one squad meaning they're all fearless. Swarms are cheap so you take a bunch. The Lord Gets in base contact.

He's an independent character so Mephiston has to either choose him or the swarms. Plus they're all fearless, so they won't run, and the Swarms can absorb the fearless saves.

Ahh, quite quite. I was under the mistaken assumption that they were seperate units prior to joining close combat, which would frankly be stupid... But yes, I see your point. That may hold Mephiston for about a turn or so, depending on the size of the scarab unit.

Necrons cannot tarpit meph. He will just sweep their asses.

Only option is Heavy Destroyers.

Jaon wrote:Necrons cannot tarpit meph. He will just sweep their asses.

Only option is Heavy Destroyers.

How would regular destroyers do against meph?

On average it takes 90 shots from normal destroyers to take him out... Ofc, it's matter of luck... You can take him out faster or slower than average
Oh well, looks like against BA, I'll have to play to stay on the table so that I get few points for not being annihilated... Warriors in reserves, destroyers turbo-boosting away from mephiston, and try to do maximum damage with lith and nightbringer before he catches them... And hope that destroyers live to contest objectives for possible draw:p
From all the lists that I'll be facing there, I think that this is most difficult one for me, if not impossible:p

I really hate to say this, because it would only bee good against mefiston, but arent pharias cool against him?

Well, yes and no... He'll eat them before they get to hit him

Edited because I don't even know the rules...

I hate Mephiston. Every time i'm at a tournament, in every game he's there. On the upside he can't join units, so if you're shooting him, you're actually shooting HIM

My usual SW opponent borrowed a BA codex and tried them out. He said he's never play them again. The Cheese level was too high, and he felt dirty for using Mephiston.

All you can really hope for is massive amounts of fire taking him down. Heavy destroyers are too fragile, and anything else has a habit of bouncing off...

Oh for a Null Rod toting C'tan

Worst thing is that I'm not fielding heavy-d's... So only luck can save me... I hope he will fail psychic test with force weapon against my c'tan Then I'll eat him
I don't think mephiston is that cheesy... If it were my SM, I'd eat him alive with assault termies and my libby negating his spells... But since there will be 7 out of 14 players fielding some sort of marines, I decided to go with crons to make things interesting... I can handle everything else on tournament, but I hope BA will not be in my group:p

Shelegelah wrote:

The Scarab Swarms and the Lord are one squad meaning they're all fearless. Swarms are cheap so you take a bunch. The Lord Gets in base contact.

He's an independent character so Mephiston has to either choose him or the swarms. Plus they're all fearless, so they won't run, and the Swarms can absorb the fearless saves.

Ahh, quite quite. I was under the mistaken assumption that they were seperate units prior to joining close combat, which would frankly be stupid... But yes, I see your point. That may hold Mephiston for about a turn or so, depending on the size of the scarab unit.

Heh, it can hold Mephiston for the entire game if you get lucky with the Lord Reviving, and you can keep Mephiston's help away. The second part is a bit hard to do but if they're fighting off the rest of your army it can work nicely. I've gotten especially lucky and I tarpitted him for a whole game up until turn 5 where he got lucky and finally killed off the Scarab swarms. The Lord actually revived again, that was 5 revives in a single game!

I have to say that Pariahs, as mentioned, are a great way to at least stand a chance. Particle Whips are AP1 if they hit him directly so that's a decent chance of doing a wound if you don't scatter. The Nightbringer has a Lascannon(sort of) that would help too.

Just turtle up behind some Monoliths and wait for him to come to you. Sure he'll own a Monolith (if the Pariahs let him) but then you can shoot him with everything you've got and charge him with the Nightbringer and finish him off. I get the feeling that this will come down to dice.

How about just...MASS FIRE?! How many warriors need to shoot him to kill him? Or a more combat eficiant unit? How about a lord with a wraight wing? Just burry him in shots, he has to die sometimes even with T6 +2 save. He "only" has 5 wounds.

One wound from bolter fire takes 6 before armor, which takes 36 hits, which takes 54 shots.

He's quite capable of taking every shot from a Necron army for 2 or more turns.

If You've got the points to spare and the mobility to pull it off, try tossing 4 Pariah at him along with 4 Flayed ones. If you can get them both to charge him (unlikely) then he's gonna be Much easier to deal with. He'll have that psychic test at Ld. 7 if he tries any of those and in CC he'll have to pass that if he doesn't want to hit on 6's, which should help cut down the number of deaths you'll be receiving in turn. If you could then get a Lord with a Scythe or C'tan in there that'll get him, but then you've sort of wasted a bunch of point on just one guy. It's about the best option though CC wise.

90 shots from destroyers, 270 shots from warriors... On average
I don't think it's smart to waste lith shots on him... Better to pop down assault marines advancing towards me with FNP:p
We'll see... I still hope that he won't be in my group for round 1 of the tournament...

Relax.
You dont have to hurt him to kill him, he does it well enough on his own.

He will be using wings, sword and possibly his force wep atleast every turn in combat.
Wings every single turn.
Perils will do enough damage to him for getting greedy with the powers.


While im not a necron player anymore, i'd use the lith to play hide and seek with him.
Just keep moving away from him until he burns himself out.

Granted you could blast away at him, but it wont do too much.


Not tried this, but wraiths supported by a scythe lord should tar-pit him and put some damage on him.
They still get inv. saves, so he wont be ignoring any saves.



Usually he is an easy target, but he really is a problem for crons 0_o
Never had this problem until now.

I like that a SW player feels dirty playing Meph, I'm surprised he could say it with a straight face what with wolves having a stronger dex n all.

Just try and run away from him and shoot him with heavy-d's... bout all you can do