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I've got a bud whose been playing necrons for a while now, and he's starting to get the hang of playing competitively with them. He's been eliminating units like flayed ones, tomb spiders, ect. that he used to use and starting to mass immortals, 'lith's and destroyers. With these changes my eldar army is having a hard time beating him. Last time we played he had beaten me by ~50 VP worth of actual killing and enough objective points to give him a solid victory. The sad thing is that the mission was recon, which you would think eldar would excel at. I didn't want to risk moving my force past his wall of 'crons 'liths and his deciever (which chews up my avatar/eldrad combi quite gruesomely.)

I even tried to pull out all the tricks that would normally be effective against necrons. Like when he had his three units of immortals spread accross the board, i would destroy one completely to avoid that squad getting WBB (negating the reroll from the liths as well.) Same with his warrior squads. Only next time he won't spread his units, he is going to keep them together. What will i do then? Try and force my way through 3+ saves and 4+ rerollables? Yea...thats a sure path to destruction.

It is almost impossible to destroy the monoliths as they negate both tank destroying rules that eldar rely on, melta and lance. I was thinking about using some wraithguard next game though...they should do fine against it, but they are otherwise not very good.

I can't really engage him in CC, because he will just port out and blast my fragile eldar cc units to bits. You might think to use scorpions for their extra resilience then, but they have only a few power attacks. So probably whatever I killed would just get rezzed with his rerollable WBB, unless i got lucky and swept him.
Another cc problem is one of my main cc assets, eldrad/avatar, get totally shredded by his c'tan. I can't go near his troops for fear of that monster. Ignore invuln. saves...GG. This largely wastes the 365 points i spend on them. My list is an all comers, so i'm not going to remove them just to gain an advantage on my cron bud.

The worst thing against him is that he can completely own my skimmers. Serpents are an utter waste of points as they get glanced 2-3 times for each squad that he shoots at them. As a result the units i put inside of them are worthless because they will never get to where they need to be. My falcons only shoot one turn before he shakes em and i have to go hide. Gauss is one of the most overpowering abilities in the game, and it gives necrons an ability to kill vehicles that should not be allowed, especially on units that also excel at killing infantry. I feel bad for people who use land raiders against 'crons.

So necrons seem to have all the bases covered. They are too resilient to shoot them to death. They suck at combat, but can port out of it. They are generally slow, but destroyers and porting make up for this. They have few dedicated anti tank units, but all of their units are arguably some of the best tank killers in the game.

With all this being said, our game actually wasn't as bad as it may seem. He may have landed a solid victory through objectives, but I had killed more than half his army (while he did the same to mine ) In the grand scheme of things, he was only 10 models from phasing, which really isn't that much. So all is not lost, victory is within reach. I will need to take out all the stops as I go about it though, and I could use some help learning about the necron's weaknesses.

Advice?

P.S. I had a small rules question that seemed iffy to me. When I killed a whole unit of something and he had nothing close to rez them, he just kept them knocked over. Then later in the game if he would have gotten a unit of the same kind close then he could roll. This put a lot of stress on me to keep the ones i killed to stay down. A squad of 10 warriors that i had wiped out coming back with 4+ rerollable WBB would blow. (Fortunetly i was able to keep them down.) So i was wondering if that's how it actually works. I was thinking that if he was unable to take his WBB on his next turn then his models would have to be removed from the table.

If there's nothing within range to get the WBB, the models go away (Not being able to make a roll is the same as failing it)

could you point out a page number/line of text for reference to this, because he and I looked through it and neither of us could really find something that said that.

Well, without knowing your list, of your friends list, I have 2 words for you:

Dark Reapers.

Nothing brings Necrons down like them. Yes, he will have a res-orb, and the monoliths, but if you keep shooting away at him, you will start to grind him down. Then after he loses enough of one type of unit, then in one turn to can try to wipe that type out. For example you shoot his Immortals enough and get them low on numbers, you can then try to wipe them all out in one turn by shooting your whole army at them.

Also small assault squads in Falcons are good. If you can whittle the squad size down some you can then assault them and get them to run so they will not be back.

Remember, that besides destroyers, his range is around 24", so sit back and shoot him up.

Dark reapers will definitely not win a shooting match with either immortals or destroyers.

Assaulting Necrons is in my experience the best way to get rid of them.

Man, Necrons would be so cool if they could have unit leaders like Pariahs. lol sad they won't ever get that.

Longshot wrote:Dark reapers will definitely not win a shooting match with either immortals or destroyers.

Well with fortune they can hold up against regular destroyers, and I do agree with the sentiment...but maybe Blackmoor can tell us how they issue the beat down on Destroyers without getting chopped up?

Longshot wrote:Dark reapers will definitely not win a shooting match with either immortals or destroyers.

I disagree.

I run Dark Reapers in my GT lists. I think that they can drop a lot of Necrons, and they are also good against Godzilla nids.

At he LVGT I tied a Necron player that had a little bit of everything (the reason why I tied was that on the very last turn when I was going to assault him, he downed both my Falcons with lucky shots).

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/168713.page

At the 'Ardboyz I won the Southern California regional when I was able to blow the crap out of a Destroyer heavy Necron army (and took all kinds of shooting in return with a fortuned 3+ save).

And Phased out a 3 Monolith Necron army in game #1 of the Baltimore GT on my way to getting 97 battle points and just missing best general.

Can we see your list? I'm always interested in lists. Doh nm. lol blackmoor if I remember right you sat next to me for 2 games. Jackass! jk you have a pic of yourself?

Stelek wrote:Can we see your list? I'm always interested in lists. Doh nm. lol blackmoor if I remember right you sat next to me for 2 games. Jackass! jk you have a pic of yourself?

All of my Batreps for the LVGT are on the second page of the batrep forum.

The only thing I changed for Baltimore is that I took off a Guardian Squad and added a Dire Avenger squad.

I have a few questions, mostly for blackmoor, but i'll start with his list and mine

The jist of what he had was (2000):
Deceiver
Veil lord (w/o orb)
2x 10 warriors
2x 6 immortals
1x 5 immortals
4x destroyers
2x monoliths

What i brought (as my more friendly all comers list):
Eldrad
Avatar
10 Howling Banshees- Exarch w/ executioner
Wave Serpent- Vectored engines, spirit stones, EML
6 Harlequins- 6x kisses, 1 shadowseer
6 fire dragons- Exarch with tank hunters
2x 3 jetbikes- 1x SC
10x Dire Avengers- Exarch with bladestorm and double catapults
Wave Serpent- TL Shuriken cannons, VE, SS, Underslung SC
Wraithlord- EML, brightlance
Falcon- scatter laser, shuriken cannon, vectored engines, spirit stones, holo fields
Falcon- scatter laser, shuriken cannon, vectored engines, spirit stones, holo fields

The basic happenings of the game was i set up planning on using my longer ranged shooting to hurt him while he advanced. It worked somewhat, but eventually it just ended up getting me cornered. And with his porting he actually got to me fairly quickly. I took every opportunity he gave me. Some immortals sitting in LOS to all my stuff, not close to other immortals...i blasted em. He ports some immortals in my face alone with the veil...i blased/assaulted em. Set a squad of warriors away from his other squad...also blasted and assaulted. What really slowed down my killing was trying to avoid the c'tan the whole game. I had to dedicate my movement to basically staying away from it, while the rest of his stuff was able to close in on me. To shoot it would have taken a lot of my resources that i wanted to dedicate to phasing him out. Also because of that rule i had a question about i was dedicating a lot of resources to making sure what i killed stayed down. When i wiped out an immortal squad, he would bring another squad over, which i was then obligated to destroy or the first ones would have been brought back.

I know that shooting his destroyers is an obvious thing to do, but he never really gave me LOS to them with enough to kill all of em in one swoop. And if you don't kill all of em, they will probably all come back...

My units that i feel failed were the banshees, and the dire avengers. Mostly because gauss absolutely rapes the serpents. His first turn he had the avenger's serpent completely worthless (2x weapon destroyed, 1x immobilized). His second turn he immobilized my banshees serpent with its ass next to the board edge. Though it managed to get some rokkit shots off throughout the game, and a few managed to squeeze out to assault when he ported immortals near my line. The avatar did poorly because the turn when he could have usefully assaulted something, he ended up running from the deceiver's moral check ability that works against fearless units. Eldrad was a charm, so was the wraithlord. With him having no ap its friggin untouchable by his shooting when fortuned. The falcons did alright. I found guiding falcons is very worth while.

As for my questions, i was wondering if maugan is a good addition to reapers, perhaps instead of the avatar. Also, blackmoore, how do you run your reapers? just the basic 5? What do you give your exarch if anything? Should i drop the wraithlord for them? I have always liked reapers, but with the crammed HS choices its hard to get them in.

Sorry if this post seems a little rushed, but its late and im getting flustered at the thought of how the necrons are...

I love Maugen Ra. He's so uber.

I hate fighting Necrons, and it's because of Monoliths and the Veil. You can't beat them at attrition w/ WBB and the Portal.

Your problem was definately the banshees and DA staying inside their transports. I don't know what to suggest, other than don't use them, if you're going to keep them in your list they are handy for an extra few inches of early game movement/ deployment but banshees get fleet anyway.

That said, Banshees and DA both work excellently with Eldrad. Fortune, and Doom complement both and Guide compliments DA. Eldrad will really help you put the hurt on, so long as they don't take you out before you get a chance.

It is almost impossible to destroy the monoliths as they negate both tank destroying rules that eldar rely on, melta and lance.

Vibrocannons. If you're playing Eldrad, he'll let you move them around to get the best spot to take out the Monoliths and hide behind something solid.

If he wants to kill the Vibrocannons he'll have to either use Destroyers or VOD Immortals. If you place them right and support them, whatever unit he uses will pay the price, and won't be able to Rez. Whatever happens, it'll cost him a lot more than the 100 points you'll pay for 2x Vibrocannons.

I can't really engage him in CC, because he will just port out and blast my fragile eldar cc units to bits.

He has to maintain a pretty tight formation to do this, either staying near the Monolith, or having a Lord around. If he's doing this effectively, you're probably correct that you won't get too much out of assault. If you do take some counter-assault, Banshees are pretty tough on Necrons, because they deny a WBB save. Their S3 on T5 is pretty pitiful, but if you get enough attacks, they can do a lot. An Executioner helps.

If his formation is that tight, it gives you a lot of room to work around the edges, which Eldar will do well.

Another cc problem is one of my main cc assets, eldrad/avatar, get totally shredded by his c'tan.

He's fielding a Monolith and a C'Tan? He must not have very many Necrons on the table. Rangers/Pathfinders will kill off a C'Tan pretty well, but the real idea there is just let them plod around a 6" per turn and ignore them.

Based on the list you describe, he's got 46 Necrons. You need to kill 35 to win. That's not very many models in a 2000 point game.

The worst thing against him is that he can completely own my skimmers.

With what units? Destroyers? Immortals? If they're always in range to get teleported to the Monolith, then they're not covering the whole board. 3 Destroyers take 9 shots, get 6 hits, and need a 6 to do anything to your tank. On average that's one Glance. If they fail, the tank should have a good chance of kill them in response. Immortals only have 24" range, which is good, but not good enough that you can't avoid it, especially if they're lurking around the Monolith.

Then later in the game if he would have gotten a unit of the same kind close then he could roll.

I'm fairly amazed how bad the rules are on this. Necrons were actually my first fully army, and for as long as I've played them, I've always assumed that a model that couldn't check for WBB was just gone, but I never realized that the rules don't say so explicitly.

Your friend should not be leaving models laid down from turn to turn. This is not how anyone else plays.

I looked at the FAQs and saw nothing to clarify this issue. Assure your friend that nobody else is playing that way.

If you want more support, start a thread in YMDC. I think there's enough in the rules to make a very strong case for the way that we've all been playing it, but it's still a badly written rule.

A squad of 10 warriors that i had wiped out coming back with 4+ rerollable WBB would blow.

How is he getting these re-rolls? The only way is the Monolith's portal.

All of this points out the key to Necrons. The number one key to beating them is to know their rules. As you've already found out, those rules are poorly written, and can be very confusing, but you need to know them to make the best decisions to win. Also, apparently, because a lot of Necron players don't know them, and will take advantage of you.

All in all, I think your best bet with his list is to ignore the Monoliths, avoid the C'Tan (it's slow, shouldn't be too hard), and kill Necrons till phase out.

Stelek wrote: Man, Necrons would be so cool if they could have unit leaders like Pariahs. lol sad they won't ever get that.

I suggested the same thing to a friend of mine the other day. Unfortunately their name would contradict their new role.

Well, heres an idea, I don't play eldar or know the list very well, so this is more just anti-necron for this list.

If possible, like others have said get into cc with them. The trick is, if possible, engage 2 or more units. Then to be able to shoot at your people, he needs to waste all his monolith teleports on that. If you had gotten some shooting casualties, then he can't reroll these. If you can assault with more than 1 unit per turn, thats also good. I think with necrons if you can't take out a whole squad (i.e. destroyers) its not that bad to spread out your fire. If you can whittle down one unit and then assault another or two, it leaves him hard choices for where his teleports will be used. Also, without an orb, if it is possible use weapons that ignore WBB, and I'm looking at your harliquins.

Why do you have an avatar in your list? Seems like he'd be too slow to keep up with everyone else.

Or do he and the waithlord hang out?

He's there for everyone to go:

OMG IT IS THE DUDE! WE FEEL NO FEAR!

That and he discourages people to assault you since he's quite capable of ripping the heart out of most assault units.

If the monoliths are causing you a headache the best thing I've found are WG in a WS.

Before everyone says - I know they are expensive however there is nothing more effective against Monoliths than six popping out a transport and opening up.

I've even used then footslogging with eldrad fortuning them. If you give them a warlock with conceal then it becomes a very hard unit for necrons to kill (except the deceiver). You could always mind war the deceiver though.

Just MHO.

What i brought (as my more friendly all comers list)

...lol


Well, that aside the solution to your problem is fortuned Shining Spears with withdraw. You allready have Eldrad and one of our min sizend Jetbike units is not needed to fill troop requirements. Go ahead and buy the 2 Spears+Exarch box, mailorder 2 lances and youre good to go with minimal effort.

And now that I saved you, please never ever call Eldrad/Avatar/2Falcons/Harlequins/Firedragons/Min Jetnbikes/Mounted Avengers a "more friendly" list.^^

Lol, well its more friendly than a three falcon list is what i mean...

Avatar is there because i like him. Sure he is often too slow to engage, but he sure as hell soaks up a lot of shooting. It also keeps my much more vulnerable...but much more shooty WL from dieng because the avatar takes so much of the shooting that the WL is vulnerable to.
The avatar, wraithlord, and eldrad generally hang out. They form a small area on the board that says "GTFO" and "shoot me with everything you got (and i'll survive)" at the same time.

And when he does engage...get the hell out of his way...

Though I am intrigued with Maugan Ra plus reapers. They inspired a feeling of extreme blastyness within me.

I've drawn up a list following the advice you have given. It also follows that feeling of fire power that i get from maugan and the reapers.

Eldrad
Maugen Ra
2x 6 fire dragons
5 wraithguard- warlock, SS, conceal
wave serpent- EML, SS
2x 4 jetbikes- warlock with SS and destructor
8 warp spiders- exarch, dual spinners, withdraw
2x falcon- holofield, SS, SC, SL
5 dark reapers- exarch with EML, fast shot

Overall i think it will do better against crons with the increased fire power. Also WG will put the hurt on 'liths, as will lock spears.
I think it should fair well as an all comers list too. It has a resilient fire base that will draw assault armies close, then the WG/dragons/WS can spring out and wreck stuff. It is very mobile though, and can go on the offensive against static armies.

The only thing i don't like about it is it has many one shot wonder type units.

It's been my experience that people ignor the avatar. Though he'd make life easier against orks and nids though.

My list I run Spear+Bike Lance Autarch+Bike Seer
They are pretty invunerable when they turbo boost and they'll kill just about everything. In a pinch an Autarch can spinter off to get an additional.
Jain Zar in a tranport or even prince yuriel could put out alot of wounds.

and lastly swooping hawks
Though they suck in every concievable role, the design team decided to make them eldars primary way of dealing with AV 14.
Though in a vacume they kill Lith's left and right getting them into postion could be tricky. They just aren't all that durable.

Stelek wrote:That and he discourages people to assault you since he's quite capable of ripping the heart out of most assault units.

That would be another way to kill Necrons: outnumber (Avatar and Wraithlords) and sweeping advance, the more individual squads the better.