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I am unsure if this belongs in general discussion but here it goes

I need advice against necrons at lower point ranges

I only have tau as an army and my friend has necrons
And even to this day I have not been able to beat him

I need some advice because as of his codex update and 6th edition I just cannot predict what he will do

He has been using as of late flying circus death marks with template cypteks
Annihilation barge spam
Difficult dangerous terrain combo with that one cyptek and shard (though now I find out its only first turn, though it didn’t stop him from making me take checks all game)

All in the 500-1000 point range

Well in any case he keeps changing up tactics every game so I don’t really know what to expect (though at least he hasn’t gotten fliers yet)

Two problems

1) It looks like neither of you know the rules very well, and you should probably read through his book a few times to make sure you know what he's bringing.

2) Tau are old. Necrons are new. This means Tau are bad, and Necrons are good.

An unfortunate peripheral problem with 40k's business model is that to sell new models, they need to sell new rules. To sell new rules, the new ones have to be better than the old ones.

Which means players get the shaft, and consumers get high ground.

My honest advice is to work with your friends on updating the older codexes that you like using with homerules that make them competitive again. Make sure that everyone's alright with these homerules before playing a game with them!

Have you tried shooting at his models till he has nothing left ? I hear Tau are pretty good at that.

Fire warriors up the ing yang. Hide behind cover. Shoot, shoot more, back up and shoot, shoot him a few more times.

Use Broadsides to reduce anything larger than man sized to scrap.

Take 3 broadsides with shield drones, a battlesuit HQ with whatever weapons you need, 2 units of 12 fire warriors and then fill in the gaps, you should do well, if not, well maybe your dice are a lie.

adamsouza wrote:Have you tried shooting at his models till he has nothing left ? I hear Tau are pretty good at that.

Fire warriors up the ing yang. Hide behind cover. Shoot, shoot more, back up and shoot, shoot him a few more times.

Use Broadsides to reduce anything larger than man sized to scrap.

I'd agree with this.

I approve of the shoot him message.

Sarcasm aside

yes iv shot at him but some how he magically brings everything back or making every jinks save.

Im just asking for advice on things to look out for or things that may be effective like broadsides (which iv started to include)

thx

Concentrate your fire on a squad until it's destroyed. They can't come back if there are no survivors.

Broadsides and Melta/Plasma Crisis Suits are the only effective way of killing Necrons with Tau. Fire Warriors are a lie, please ignore them.

Necrons are weak against melee and excel at dealing with shooting armies. Tau are horrible and melee and can only shoot. Tau currently should nearly never win against necrons as long as both players are equally competent.

If my math is correct it takes 48 (so 4 squads or 2 squads rapid firing) pulse rifle shots to kill 2-3 necron immortals. (48 shots, 24 hit, 16 wound, 5.3 get through saves, and depending on res or 2-3 make their WBB rolls.

That same 10 immortals at rapid fire range cause 13ish hits and 9 wounds at ap4 which ignores the FW saves. So unless they are in cover they just dang near wiped the squad.

You want to tell a tau player to take fire warriors and shoot the necron player? you might as well tell the tau player to pick another army.

What's a better option then ?

You managed to gak on the advice he was given without providing anything better.

At low points? How low? 100? 500? 1000?

In any event, you're pretty well fethed, because Necrons start out strong and only get stronger as the points stack up, though given the numbers you've tossed out, it looks like you're running a 1500+ points game, just off the top of my head because my Necron Codex is not readily available.

So, yeah, what adamsouza or chrisrawr said. Crisis Suits are going to be a bit more reliable with their heavier weapons, but cost more, while if you stack up large blobs of Fire Warriors, you should be able to shoot a squad or two of Warriors to death in a round.

Oh no the points were

500 pt
750 pt
and 1000pt
to keep it simple.

random mission and deployment
no home rules
and was playing in a
gw store (also sucks only one piece of forest terrain =( )

editing it here:

he was running 3 in the 1000 points
in the lower points 1-2 or just flying circus with minimum warriors

How is he spamming Annihilation Barges at 500 and 750 points?

Crisis suits with as much AP4 or lower weaponry as possible.

Brother SRM wrote:Crisis suits with as much AP4 or lower weaponry as possible.

This is your only option. Tau had problems with Necrons when their first codex was released. The new codex only makes it worse.

Pick yourself up an Ageis Defense line, add the quad gun. Use the crisis suits (armed with plasma and missile pods) and Jump shoot jump to move behind the screen after every turn. This way you will get 4+ cover vs all those guns that Necrons can bring that will just beat your guys out with AP3 or AP4. The quad gun will force your opponent to direct some fire at it, thus not at your guys.

Give at least one of of your Crisis suits in each squad black sun filters. And now his night fighting manipulation wont matter to you.

But seriously, your in a massive up hill climb. There is a reason I've shelved my 2500 points of Tau since 5th edition came out. I don't like playing the all suit list, and unfortunately that is the only style of list that will even have a chance. Sadly, its a slim chance at best.

500
HQ = 1 Overlord with Scythe or Szeras
Troops = x5 Warriors twice
Heavy = 3x Barges

Well let me just run down a list of stuff I love taking.

The first is a decked out surf lord (overlord on a command barge) who 9 kittens out of 8 will make you dedicate a lot of shooting his way. Best chance is to pen the barge once and then unleash all the rounds that can go through AV11 to glance it to death and then bury the overlord in small arms fire. My second favorite surf lord is Zahn with Obryon in a group of 10 immortals (though it was nerfed in 6th). since I can just flat out the CCB and teleport the squad behind your back, and the CCB can get 3+ cover or some other silly and nasty thing.

The next thing is fliers, I'm just playing with new toys right now but you can't say that the 24", disembark, move 6", and then fire at full BS on both transport and troops is sexy. Not to mention how often the death ray will ruin your day if you don't get a cover from it. (Expecially if your friend is silly like me and gives the Doomscythe's Str 10 AP 1 instant hit weapon Tank Hunter)

After them it is mostly normal stuff like immortals, wraiths, anni barge.

Almost 97% of necron shooting is under 24", try to get as little models in base contact with wraiths. Never assault an overlord with a small unit (If MSS goes off you're already losing one guys attacks, you don't want to lose more)/

adamsouza wrote:
What's a better option then ?

You managed to gak on the advice he was given without providing anything better.

There is no better option. Necrons vs Tau is a 10-0 match up for Necrons. The tau's only strength is also the thing that doesn't work on necrons. And the tau don't have an option that can work against the necrons weaknesses. Your only option is to take suit spam with mass AP4. And even then you aren't getting through their likely 4+ WBB and their melee units invuln saves. I don't normally like saying that an army stands "no chance" but really the only advice you can give a tau player when fighting necrons is "be better than he is." Tau would probably still lose to necrons with a 500 point handicap. It is that bad.

The only advantage you have over necrons is your range of your weapons. And due to the necrons mastery of night fight you aren't going to be able to use that until their weapons are also in optimal range.

Alternative Solution: Take Necrons AND Taus together

Only one forest template? There's the main problem.

My advice? Keep losing. Build his ego. Let him gloat.

Then when the new Tau codex comes out.... laugh... on, into zee night.

Just tabled 1850 points of Necrons with 1750 points of Sisters. It was... interesting.

Heavy Bolter Retributors are really powerful in this context.

If Tau had some more reliable AP4 than Missile Pods and Submunitions (Say, the option for heavy burst cannons S6 AP4), it'd go a long way towards making them a contender in this matchup.

Take a hammerhead or 2 and pre measure to stay outside his weapon range. Then either Ion cannon Necrons or blast template squads with the railgun (I am still unsure which is best Ion or rail). Give your whole army Night vision only 3 points a squad and use Stealth suits with drones to absorb shots. Watch him try and blow up 2+ cover save drones. Sensor spines ignore dangerous terrain. Hide troops inside devilfish behind cover with SMS to fire.
Outflank a Kroot hound squad and have fun beating them in CC. Krootox are pretty deadly in CC and shooting with rapid fire out to 24” but you cannot outflank and need some sort of cover save.

Take some allied space marine th&ss termis.

'crons have more firepower but it's more shorter ranged than yours. Particularly if you get the length-wise game type, you should be able to do serious damage to his vehicles before he gets within range of you.
Unless he can turn on night fighting whenever he likes.
Oh sup, we made an army with devestating shooting power but it's pretty much limitted to 24", so they'll be out-done by long range firepower to balance it out. Actually feth it, let's make them immune to anything over 36"

Testify wrote:'crons have more firepower but it's more shorter ranged than yours. Particularly if you get the length-wise game type, you should be able to do serious damage to his vehicles before he gets within range of you.
Unless he can turn on night fighting whenever he likes.
Oh sup, we made an army with devestating shooting power but it's pretty much limitted to 24", so they'll be out-done by long range firepower to balance it out. Actually feth it, let's make them immune to anything over 36"

But this is about Tau V Necrons and Tau for 3 points a squad with Blacksun Filters gain night version ignoring that problem. For around 20points Tau can pretty much have the entire army with Night version.

As it stands night fighting hasn’t been an issue as bsf became standard on my army
Seems a little depressing to hear “no chance” but for the most part it seems as such
Perhaps I should invest in a secondary force, though I prefer not to, aegis line seems interesting and till more dedicated anti air comes up for tau the quad gun will do.

Pottsey wrote:

Testify wrote:'crons have more firepower but it's more shorter ranged than yours. Particularly if you get the length-wise game type, you should be able to do serious damage to his vehicles before he gets within range of you.
Unless he can turn on night fighting whenever he likes.
Oh sup, we made an army with devestating shooting power but it's pretty much limitted to 24", so they'll be out-done by long range firepower to balance it out. Actually feth it, let's make them immune to anything over 36"

But this is about Tau V Necrons and Tau for 3 points a squad with Blacksun Filters gain night version ignoring that problem. For around 20points Tau can pretty much have the entire army with Night version.

Eh, 13 points per unit that wants it, actually. Gets really expensive for little other benefit.

I think your best bet would be to take advantage of the new ally rules since Tau got off so well with them. Take some army with great close combat and just demolish the Necrons in cc.

Chaos Santa wrote:I think your best bet would be to take advantage of the new ally rules since Tau got off so well with them. Take some army with great close combat and just demolish the Necrons in cc.

At that point, you might as well just take the Tau as the allies an obligatory FW squad and a cheapo HQ to stick in a corner.

Lots of battle suits and broadsides and 3-4 fire warrior squads as battle suits are almost nigh impossible to beat in close combat and those 30" range pulse rifles are good at killing squads from close range and if you did over 1500 points you would have to put in commander farsight yo your army