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Now that i have my necron army assembled me and my friendgroup have started playing a few games. However we have already struck a problem. We prefer to play pitched battles of ,To the death or a percentage loss as it keeps things simple for learners. However as my necrons have the "phase out" rule we are wondering if its fairer to play our games to the death or to 25%?

Is phase out supposed to pose as a major disadvantage for necrons or is a 25% game fair?

play the missions there is more balance where objectives are concerned compared to just sitting and shooting!

well i dont think it is just sitting and shooting, i feel there is still alot of strategy involved. especially seeing im yet to play my 3rd game.

I will look into missions later although im sceptical that they can be fairly balenced.

So which is fairer of the two to the death/25%?

We've done the "To the last man standing" styled game and found that in normal games of 2000pts it gets a little boring. even more so when you get to the hide and seek stage of the game.

I agree with "Reaver83" missions force you to get stuck into the game and the victory conditions give an accurate way of determining the victor 99% of the time. (why do I always seem to get that 1%? lol)

well to the death is to the death, no more anything left on the table, but because youre necrons your death is 25%. i dont think it would be fair to impose your disadvantage on your opponent do you?

play the standard missions. they do provide enough variety to keep things interesting, at least in the beginning and they will also get you to start thinking about things a bit more latterally than i go there, i shoot that dude, i win.

Phase Out at 25% is not a disadvantage for Necrons: It's there to balance out how tough they are to kill.

What's unfair is holding that rule over armies that aren't balanced around the Phase Out rule.

Standard Missions are standard for a reason. They give a balanced, tactical game, in which both players have a limited time in which to achieve their objectives.

Playing "kill to the last man" is a common way to start out when two players are learning the rules together, but it does get old, and it does lack balance, because the different armies' different levels of durability and different movement rates are designed to work within a (roughly) six turn framework.

I can see only playing to the last man until you get the rules down to simplify things while you learn.

The Necrons phasing out at 25 percent I think is something you need to get used to since this is the army you chose. So asking the other players to play to 25 percent seems like something that would handicap you in the long run. Also it is the rule that balances them out since they have the WBB roll.

If I could make a suggestion for a more fair game that will help you in the long run though I would say play VP’s with normal turn rules. This will add a ton more strategy to your game and help you guys get used to the random game ending.

It means you will get to practice more tactics, and have a clear cut winner in the normal amount of turns. Also less of a adjustment for you when you start rolling for missions because you have the rules down.

Play to 7 turns and whoever has more points on the board wins.

I think variable number of turns is kind of important to the balance of the game, too. If the game auto-ended on turn 5, anyone who goes last on turn 5 has entirely too much power, with the certainty that his opponent will not act again. It puts too much power in the units that can move 18"+ a turn. Granted, this comes up in games that go to turn 7, but who ever has anything left on the table at turn 7 anyway, let alone fragile speedy units?

The missions are all fairly straightforward. The best learning game, in my opinion, is Capture and Control (2 objectives in your deployment zones), and pitched battle (12" deployment zones on table edges). Very simple, straightforward, and relatively balanced. In a 'go till the table's wiped' sort of situation, it favours the slow, tough units, as they now have all the time in the world to catch up to you. The whole point of a land raider is that for it's point value, it's simply not an efficient cost to damage ratio (it's more complicated than that I know, but bear with me). However, if you get 8 or 9 or more turns in with a land raider, think how much more it will get done, because it's so difficult to wipe out. Same story with a Monolith, more or less.

Remember, 40k is now a game of missions and objectives. New players have the blessed ignorance of not having to adapt from their old ways, no reason to push them away from the objective-mindedness of the new ruleset. Embrace it, and learn to rule over it like unto a god