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Tonight I played against Dark Eldar with my Necrons, and won a narrow victory 5-3 on kill points. In the FLGS people asked me how I did in my game, and looked genuinely surprised when I said I won. This really bugs me - used properly, Necrons CAN win, but there just seems to be such a miscinception that they are next to useless. Several people said to me before the game that I wouldn't have a chance. From the top of my head, here are the 1750 lists:

Lord w/Scythe, Orb, Veil

10 Warriors
10 Warriors

4 Destroyers
4 Destroyers

10 Immortals

Monolith x 2

------------------------------------

Duke Silicus
Haemonculus (webway)

9 Wytches + Raider

Venom Bomber
6 Scourges

2 packs of 10 warp beasts with 2 beast masters each

Talos

5 man warrior squad with dark lance x 2

20 man warrior unit with 2 splinter cannons


----------------------------------------------------

The above is off the top of my head, but thats the general gist of it. Basically I played in reserve, and came on in piecemeal behind my monoliths to use them as shields. The destroyers engaged stuff at range, while some of his close combat hitters moved up. When he was close enough, I teleported warriors through my portals to blast him, and this was highly efective. Then the turn after that, I escapeed the counter charge bu teleporting out of combat, and away into the corner, effecively blocking him from getting at my warriors.

Comments from onlookers ranged from "thats such a negative way to play", to "no wonder necrons can't win, they need to hide in a corner". I posted a thread a few weeks ago about friendly game ettiquette, and that came screaming back to me during this game. I don't think Necrons are competative - but I think that I would give any player a run for their money with them. I feel that i've learned how to use them effectively, but its equally depressing to come out of a clsoe match with a narrow win to be told "well no wonder you won - you hid most of the game."

Sorry this is a bit of a directionless rant, I just wanted to share my thoughts with the community.

Well If you field 2 monoliths then thats gonna give him a very hard time. Since one of the only ways DE can pen. the armor is with haywire grenades. So far it doesnt look like he had many haywire troops in.

I'd say that Necrons in the hands of a powerful player can win against many armies.

I'd also say that Necrons in the hands of any player can't win against certain armies.

I can't speak for your own Dark Eldar opponent, but I'd bet money that my own Dark Eldar can topple any Necron army.

Don't read too much into a single game.

To be fair though dash, you ARE the best player in the world so its no surprise your DE can beat any necron army

As dakka said, the lith's are the key to this.
Most armies have very few units that can kill a lith, in this case, haywire grenades are about the only thing that can.

Also, destroyers really do well against the paper crafts DE call transports
The fact that D's are highly mobile means theres no chance of keeping away from them either.




Ill run my crons from time to time simply for the fun of using them, but not as often as i used to.
alot of people tend to refuse to play any cron army that runs triple lith near me, which kind of killed it.
However, you just need to castle up and keep the warriors in reserve.
D's and lith's do the damage and keep you going, lord simply veils to grab an objective late in the game.

Dashofpepper wrote:
I'd also say that Necrons in the hands of any player can't win against certain armies.

100% Agree. Necrons vs Sanguinary Guard w/Priests for example is an auto lose for necrons.

Don't read too much into a single game.

I know, it was just frustrating that's all.

liam0404 wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:
I'd also say that Necrons in the hands of any player can't win against certain armies.

100% Agree. Necrons vs Sanguinary Guard w/Priests for example is an auto lose for necrons.

Why do you say that?

liam0404 wrote:Then the turn after that, I escapeed the counter charge bu teleporting out of combat, and away into the corner, effecively blocking him from getting at my warriors.

I'm not surprised at the reaction you got, to be honest. In pretty much every wargame ever created, the 'inflict some damage on your opponent and then hide until the game ends' strategy has been pretty universally guaranteed to annoy people. It gets you the win, but it's not much of a game.

That's not saying that you shouldn't do it, particularly in a more competitive setting... just that if you are going to play that way, don't be surprised when people start calling you names.

Well given that the entire army will have 2+ armour saves + feel no pain, the only way to kill them outright would be to either get a centre hole hit from the particle whip, or to use heavy destroyers (which, let's face it, are not ever likely going to make it out of my case if im not list tailoring). That means that against (almost) every shot, they get a 2+/4+ save. Plus their extra mobility, means that im unlikely to be able to rapid fire them much. Let me run some (overly generous) mathhammer.

10 immortals fire - 20 shots

Lets say 14 Hit, and at S5 we score 9 wounds.

The Sanguinary guard will fail 1, maybe 2 saves from this. Let's say 2. Then 1 will be saved from FNP.

That's 280 points of firepower, and its killed one guy...

Lets even take 9 wraiths charging into a unit of 5 sanguinary guard + 1 priest.

36 Attacks, 18 hits.

Of those 18 hits (S6), lets say 14 wounds?

The guard will likely save at least 10 of these, leaving 4. Then FNP kicks in and saves 2 of them. So thats 36 attacks used, and only 2 guard down. I know the wraiths have invuns, but they are still going to lose that combat.

Maybe there's something im not seeing, but for me that is not a winnable fight for Crons.


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insaniak wrote:

liam0404 wrote:Then the turn after that, I escapeed the counter charge bu teleporting out of combat, and away into the corner, effecively blocking him from getting at my warriors.

I'm not surprised at the reaction you got, to be honest. In pretty much every wargame ever created, the 'inflict some damage on your opponent and then hide until the game ends' strategy has been pretty universally guaranteed to annoy people. It gets you the win, but it's not much of a game.

That's not saying that you shouldn't do it, particularly in a more competitive setting... just that if you are going to play that way, don't be surprised when people start calling you names.

No that's a fair comment, and I do see where you're coming from. I think almost everyone on Dakka could say in agreement though, if I tried to go head to head against Dark Eldar with Necrons, i'd have been slaughtered.

The Necrons are always going to be fighting a losing battle. There are very few armies that will be challenged by them nowadays.

Well Atleast you have the Nightbringer. Hes a beast, very hard to kill.

DaKKaLAnce wrote:Well Atleast you have the Nightbringer. Hes a beast, very hard to kill.

I don't believe in the Nightbringer to be honest - IMHO he is 360 points thats better spent elsewhere.

Besides, agaisnt Dark Eldar, it's pointless - ALL their guns can wound him.

He lasts about one unit's shooting

Well against DE, yeah hes not gonna get much done . But against most other armies he can dish out alot of wounds. But liths and heavy destoryers would be the most effective against DE imo.

Heavy Destroyers just suffer from unit type issues - they compete for slots with Monoliths, and will just lose that fight every single time.

I would actually say something close to Liam's list would be the best way to go about taking out DEldar. Thanks to the Gauss rule, even the humble warrior can wreck a raider, plus the standard Gauss Flayer wounds Kabalite warriors on a 3.

liam0404 wrote:Heavy Destroyers just suffer from unit type issues - they compete for slots with Monoliths, and will just lose that fight every single time.

Yeah totally forgot about them being Heavy support. normal destoryers work fine too, if not better.

Cerebrium wrote:I would actually say something close to Liam's list would be the best way to go about taking out DEldar. Thanks to the Gauss rule, even the humble warrior can wreck a raider, plus the standard Gauss Flayer wounds Kabalite warriors on a 3.

As do bolters. Being gauss has little to do with it.

Gauss glances only really kick in at AV 11, which is ravager/voidraven armour.

They come in very handy in gaussing down pain engines though, as they'll wound on a 6 vs toughness 7 instead of having no effect

Destroyers are fun vs Dark Eldar though, as they'll put a hole in anything they can field, and 15 of them rollikng downfield puts out a lot of shots

You could try scarab swarms on Dark Eldar too. I've had a fair amount of success with them

liam0404 wrote:Well given that the entire army will have 2+ armour saves + feel no pain, the only way to kill them outright would be to either get a centre hole hit from the particle whip, or to use heavy destroyers (which, let's face it, are not ever likely going to make it out of my case if im not list tailoring). That means that against (almost) every shot, they get a 2+/4+ save. Plus their extra mobility, means that im unlikely to be able to rapid fire them much. Let me run some (overly generous) mathhammer.

I actually played against that army a week or so ago with my wraithwing. He had Dante, full on deep-striking sanguinary guard, and two triple lascannon predators. It was Dawn of War, Seize ground with 4 objectives...two on the left, two on the right; top and bottom for both.

He won the roll to go first and gave it to me. I deployed the Deceiver in the center of the table behind some BLOS terrain, put my warriors in reserve, Monoliths in DoW reserve, and wraiths + destroyer lord in DoW reserve.
He reserves all of his sanguinary guard, and puts both predators in DoW reserve.

Turn1a: My deceiver stays still behind terrain, my wraiths and destroyer lord turbo-boost up the middle 24", and my monoliths all come onto the left side of the board side by side to advance towards the first objective.
Turn1b: Both of his predators come on the table at the very edge - too far for me to get to and assault. One doesn't make nightfight, one causes two wounds to a wraith squad and I make both saves.

Turn2a: My wraiths turbo-boost up to his predators, the deceiver stays put, one warrior squad comes out of reserve, and my monoliths haven't had a chance to move up yet to make room behind them, so the warriors come in to the left, on the board edge. My Monoliths move forward 6", and two of them end up on top of an impassable building.
Turn2b: His reserve rolls: ALL SIX SQUADS roll 4+ and deep-strike in without a single mishap. He deep-strikes them all within range of my wraiths and all in infernus pistol range of my wraiths. His predators split left and right so I can't assault both. The predator on the left immobilized my left monolith on top of the impassable building. His right predator shakes my right monolith. Much firing later, two wraiths from one squad are down, and one from another is down. I was *really* hoping he'd shoot the last wraith in the one squad down so I could WBB consolidate into another squad to make teleporting easier, but he doesn't.

Turn3a: Neither of the two damaged wraiths make WBB rolls. The one damaged from the squad of three does. My other warriors come in from reserves and creep up 6" behind the monoliths. My right monolith attempts to move 6" up but immobilizes itself on impassable terrain so doesn't get to move. At the moment, Dante's squad is sitting on one objective, and the other three are uncontested, although my Deceiver is about 8" away from the front left one, and my monoliths aren't far from the rear left one; nothing's going on in the bottom right where the other objective is, but he's jump infantry so that can change easily enough. My middle monolith *does* move 6" up and off terrain. My wraiths are suddenly out in the open, damaged, my monolith that immobilized itself was closest to my wraiths for a teleport, he's split his predators up, and anything I assault is going to leave me unable to teleport out of combat because of being immobilized on two monoliths and subject to countercharge from the entire BA army. Instead, I turbo-boost all my wraiths 24" back and next to my monoliths. The immobilized one on the right particle whip's Dante's squad to and kills the banner. Dante takes the AP1 hit and makes an invul save, everyone else passes their save.
Turn3b: His guard move over to the right with half to secure the top right objective and be in range to grab the bottom right objective while the rest hang out on the left - outside of the Deceiver's charge range, who is hanging around behind BLOS terrain by the objective he is parallel to. Both predators fire on left and right monoliths; I suffer a weapon destroyed result on one and no damage on the other.

Turn4a: The Deceiver pokes his head around the corner, attempts to Deceive the unit closest to him (close enough to their board edge to run off) and fails. I'm hoping to draw a bit of fire away from my monoliths as well, I may need them. My monoliths are all now out of range to particle whip anything, so my warrior squads teleport up to grab the first objective and start looking at the second.
Turn 4b: More firing at my monoliths without luck; he didn't take the Deceiver bait. His sanguinary guard on the left aren't willing to come down to try contesting because the Deceiver will get them, and he'd put himself in clear range and shots for triple particle whips without cover. The jump infantry on the left jump down towards the second objective.

Turn 5a: My wraiths flat out over to the bottom right objective; within 6" of each other, and one wraith unit making a screen for the other two, such that even if he assaults me, he can't get to all my units and I'll still contest. One of my warrior squads plods forward enough to put itself within 3" of the second objective, while the Deceiver moves out into the open, 5" or so in front of the top left objective (its actually midfield) so that he can't jump over me, nor move up to me and still be within 3". He'll have to assault, or forget about it.
Turn 5b: Predators whiff on my monoliths. He tries maneuvering around the Deceiver but doesn't have range. He assaults me on the bottom left, and is forced to hit the Necron Lord's squad - the lord of course being in the rear so that I get a choice of where to pile him in at. A round of combat later, I have two dead wraiths, an unwounded Lord, and three dead sanguinary guard (one from wraiths, two from the Lord's Warscythe). He passes leadership and we're locked. They're in range to teleport (and charge again probably) if I whiff their WBB rolls.

We roll for turn 6 and don't get it.

The game ends with me having two objectives to one, one contested, and killpoints are 0-0.

Not the most exciting game ever....but Necrons don't make very exciting games. =p

Sanguinary Guard *can* be beaten. The Deceiver loves them.

DaKKaLAnce wrote:Well against DE, yeah hes not gonna get much done . But against most other armies he can dish out alot of wounds. But liths and heavy destoryers would be the most effective against DE imo.

Are you serious? A bunch of Space Marines can take Sternguard who will eat a Nightbringer in one turn. One suicide unit in a drop pod and he's gone. And depending on what else is near, it may not even end up being a suicide squad. C'tan are VERY easy to kill right now. But yes, 'Liths are awesome. I ran three in my last game...and somehow my opponent blew two of them up in one game with Lascannons and the third with a vindicator! Luck of the ****ing Irish indeed!

As was said before with Necrons you're fighting an uphill battle but it doesn't mean you auto lose. To anything.

I've played about 9 games since February with my Necrons. Seven have been outright wins. One draw. And one loss. And that loss came to the very last turn and some exceptionally bad rolling (had 17 Warriors about 10" from the table edge, lost six to shooting, rolled 11 for leadership, and 11" fallback).

They're just like any army - they do have their strong points. Sure they may not be as strong as some armies strong points but when used properly they can win a game.

One nice thing about Necrons is that people have become so conditioned to believing that Necrons suck and cannot win (except the Monolith, which they always decry as broken cheese) that you can pull some nasty tricks on them and take them by suprise if they aren't familiar with fighting Necrons.

Charging a wraithwing right through cover and into his carefully buried squads, fo example, or goading assault marines into attacking a Ctan, whose T8 can make them struggle a bit

It IS an uphill battle, but not unwinnable. You just have to be a better tactician and/or luckier than your opponent to do it.

The Cron codex has some nice units, though many are underpowered or overcosted for what they do these days..

Look, I'm all for saying Necrons are competitive. There is definitely a build or two floating around out there with a player that is capable of winning a fair share of serious games with it.

But frankly your list was much more competitive than your opponent's. Honestly your opponent's list was really really bad.

Oh, I hadn't even looked at the DE list. =p

It *is* pretty bad.

Dashofpepper wrote:Oh, I hadn't even looked at the DE list. =p

It *is* pretty bad.

Step one is read

Well, the best that I have seen people do with crons lately is with scarab spam and tomb spiders + deciever. I have also seen scarab spam, plus double 'lith plus deciever do quite well, especially against leafblower lists. Not a whole lot you can do when you have have little swarms of glancers on any armor, turboboosting and surrounding your entire army turn 1, doesnt leave a whole lot of options except to deal with them ,and scarabs are great tarpits for deathstar units...

MY FLGS does 2500 pt mega-battles, and one day, I decided to use the store army but brought my liths. Everyone hated me for it, but I made an unbreakable bunker of four monoliths and shot out between the gaps. It took about a month to live that down, but I won against Tyranids with next to no casualties.

I know, n00by, but just about the most effective strategy I have ever seen with crons for many, many months.


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Ascalam wrote:One nice thing about Necrons is that people have become so conditioned to believing that Necrons suck and cannot win (except the Monolith, which they always decry as broken cheese) that you can pull some nasty tricks on them and take them by suprise if they aren't familiar with fighting Necrons.

Charging a wraithwing right through cover and into his carefully buried squads, fo example, or goading assault marines into attacking a Ctan, whose T8 can make them struggle a bit

It IS an uphill battle, but not unwinnable. You just have to be a better tactician and/or luckier than your opponent to do it.

The Cron codex has some nice units, though many are underpowered or overcosted for what they do these days..

Very much like Tau. I shudder at the thought of what they'd be without suits.

I take it mega-battles let you ignore the FOC then?

Liths are one HS choice each

Ascalam wrote:I take it mega-battles let you ignore the FOC then?

Liths are one HS choice each

Yup

I like my FLGS, very uncaring about rulz

im2randomghgh wrote:

Ascalam wrote:I take it mega-battles let you ignore the FOC then?

Liths are one HS choice each

Yup

I like my FLGS, very uncaring about rulz

You had a game that let you ignore the FOC and you only took 4 monoliths? You're a better man than I. Lol, kidding. I'd only do that once , and only against a TFG kind of player, but I'd still make sure I take an arse-load of monoliths against a TFG.

How are tomb spiders? I wasn't sure if it would be better to run 2 monoliths and 3 tomb spiders or 3 monoliths in a wraithwing list.