Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

*EDIT* I posted the battle report down below in the thread.

Greetings tacticians:

My best friend plays Necron, I play Tau. We play together fairly often, and he's never beaten me before (until a week or two ago) simply because he doesn't use very good strategies (basically, he stays at maximum range and has a shooting war with me, doesn't turbo-boost destroyers across the board or anything.

So, we're playing 1850 on Saturday, and he's so confident that he'll beat me that he wants to bet me dinner that he'll win. His list consists of the following:

2 Monoliths
1 Lord with a Phylactory / Lightning Field (although if he's smart, he'll sub in a Rez orb)
5ish destroyers
1 squad immortals
2-3 squads of warriors
2 squads of 10 scarabs each

Now, generally speaking, I bring a gun-line, consisting of 3 sniper teams, and plenty of suits with Plasma and Fusion. The short of it is that I end up putting so much AP1, AP2, and AP3 stuff into his army that it just folds. He's playing better though, and this next game is going to involve 2 monoliths deep striking on me, 20 scarabs turbo-boosting up on me (2+ cover saves), probably with a Lord in tow, and destroyers turbo-boosting up, while his warriors and immortals hang back. Or, if he thinks he can, his warriors will stay in reserve and come out of the monolith when he deep strikes.


I need strategy advice. I can't laugh off 20 scarabs, because even as weak as they are, they'll probably kill a unit of firewarriors per turn, and maybe even a suit team. I typically bring two teams of broadsides, and a team of snipers, and fill in what I can around that, so his Monoliths don't last long, and even though they don't count towards phase out, those monoliths hurt my gunline pretty badly when they deep strike on me and D6 hits on everything within 12".

I figured I could sub out a broadside team (or two) for hammerheads, and count on those sub-munitions to take down the scarabs, but if he turbo-boosts, he'll still get 2+ cover saves. I usually bring a Fragmentation Airbursting Launcher (which ignores cover) and I figure I could bring a couple of suits with a flamer or two as well.

If I sub out the broad-sides, I'm going to be weak against those deep striking monoliths though, because my railguns are going to be busy dealing death to scarabs; and there's a big difference between a single shot from a hammerhead and twin-linked shots from suits. Snipers in this list would probably get eaten by the scarabs too, so probably need to keep them out; I could go suit heavy, or try avoiding the gunline totally by keeping a mobile army? What to do? I only use Tau, I don't use Kroot or Vespids, nor do I have any Stealth suits.

Here's the list I put together for this...

HQ1: Farsight, along with a 7 suit retinue each equipped differently, although most of them have plasma, Fusion, or both - there's a fair number of shield drones in there too.
HQ 2: Shas'o, with Iridium armour, Fragmentation Airburster and a flamer, Stimpack, two shield drones, to be ample bait out front to draw in his scarabs.

Troop 1: 6 Firewarriors
Troop 2: 6 Firewarriors

Elite 1-3 are identical:

-3 Crisis suits
-Shas'ui upgrade
-Plasma Gun, Fusion Blaster, Multi-tracker on each
Team Leader has a Hard-Wired Drone Controller and 2 Shield Drones

Fast Attack 1: 8 Pathfinders (3 rail rifles), Devilfish with disruption pods and flechette launchers.

Heavy Support 1: Hammerhead, Rail Gun, Burst Cannons, Disruption Pod, Flechette Launchers

That's it! 1998 points. 18 Crisis suits and an assortment of other stuff.

I figure that I'll deep-strike Farsight along with the suit teams, to catch the warriors and immortals in the rear. Pathfinders will provide markerlights to give everyone BS 5, and pretty much everything is going to need 2s to hit, 2s to kill.

In the meantime, my two squads of fire warriors will set up an impressive gunline, with Shas'o out front asking for a scarab rush, and my hammerhead will jet around trying to template things.

WELL, as a necron player myself, I can give you a couple suggestions:

1.GO FOR PHASE OUT!!! I can't stress that enough! If he is using the above list, then he has 46 necrons MAX (depending how many warriors he takes, and what you consider a squad of immortals to be), so that makes his phase out 12...SO, all you have to do is kill say all the warriors and the destroyers, and you can auto-win it.

2.Seeing as he isn't seeming to use a res orb (which is pretty much the worst move ever), use as many AP3 or better weapons as you can, to deny him WBB, and get closer to 1 above.

3.Scarabs...this sorta goes 2 ways: On one hand, they can actually inflict damage (double 6's FTW), but the main purpose for him is to use them to take fire, which you seem to be doing....as annoying as they can be, you shouldn't focus TOO much fire into them, and what fire you do focus, try getting some Instant Death against them to get past the 3 wounds they have (but that said, those might be the important AP1-3 weapons that could be used better for 1 above)
Another note for scarabs: what you CAN do, is send a useless unit to stop the scarabs advance, while the rest of your army works on phase out.

4.Monoliths: While they CAN deal a lot of fire, really the best bet is to not worry too much about them and, once again, go for phase out...that said, the fact that monoliths can deal HUGE damage and transport troops, it may be worth it to take them out, but only do so with weapons that you KNOW will kill it (preferably not with some useless have to penetrate on a 6 crap)


That's all I can think of for now, but I'll probably come up with more stuff...

Well, I typically have 4-6 broadsides on the table, and his monoliths are getting hit with Strength 10 AP1 hits from my heavy support choices. I suppose what I could try doing is going mobile in a minimalist sense, and take as many suits as I can field, hold them in reserve, and deep strike them on his rear ranks.

Commander Farsight can bring 7 suits with him, and that could be 16 plasma shots (AP2) and 7 fusion shots (AP1), or I could do plasma/missile....but those are STR7 AP4, which still give him all the 3+ armour saves that necron gets...and my buddy makes a LOT of his saves. Its unnatural. =p

yeah, some of that could work....if you could deepstrike some guys in after the scarabs turboboost away, you could technically go kill a lot of guys, then (if possible, not sure on the stats of Tau guys much) go and own them in assault as well.

I just fought necrons with scarabs as Tau.

If you're worried about scarabs, try using a unit or two of pathfinders. They're cheap (if you have a use for the devilfish). Then you could shoot them with a bunch of sniper shots on turn 1 by elminating their cover save. Yes, you want to AP the warriors, but instant death is too important, so you need something with S6. Alternatively, when he turboboosts to you, you could rapid fire with a bunch of your plasma/fusion suits to get the instant death you need. You're going to need a minimum of 8 pathfinders to make a dent though. Honestly though, kroot would be so much better to deal with this than anything else. Tying them up in assault is the best thing you could possibly do. It neatly ignores cover and they can't fight very well. If you break them, they just die. As in, "ha ha, completely negated your stupid trick for way fewer points, suck it Trebek".

That said, Farsight seems like an interesting possibility here. With 5 bodyguards all with plasma/fusion/targetting array, you could probaby turn him into autosad very quickly and with so much of your army invested in deepstriking whoopass, it doesn't really matter what his scarabs do to tie you up. A devilfish pathfinder for the deepstrike reroll is really good here. You shoot him a lot, all APing and some with no WBB roll. He either assaults you, or he sucks more withering fire and then gets assaulted. In assault, you're not doing to bad for yourself. Bring lots of gun drones for ablative wounds, and maybe even pinning, shield can work too, but whatever. Markerlights make all that shooting way more deadly. A full bodyguard like this is going to cost around 850-900 pts, but will ruin his phaseout number. Meanwhile, in the backfield, have 2 firewarrior squads charge the scarabs, which they can actually defeat, and they're then protected from the 'liths.

If you don't have any kroot, I'd try Farsight, just don't blow the deepstrike roll!!!

Good Luck!

A note - we've pushed our game back to Saturday and its now 2,000 points.

I think that one of the posters here was right, that I need to ignore the scarabs and monoliths and try phasing him out. The reason I haven't done that before is because I always play a gunline, and when you've got a massed line of firepower and a monolith (or two) drops on you and starts pie-plating or D6 hitting every unit within 12" (which is 1/3 of my army) it hurts, so I tend to focus fire on them.

I think it *would* be funny if I had 16-18 suits drop into his rear ranks where he keeps his warriors safe (as he's trying to scarab rush and monolith deep strike the gunline he's expecting) and pour plasma / fusion down his neck.

Anyone with suggestions on an army list?

I'm initially thinking something along these lines:

HQ 1: Farsight + 7 suits

HQ 2: Shas'o with a FAB and something else, Iridium armour (2+ armour save), 2 shield drones (to sit out front and be bait)

Troop 1: 6-12 firewarriors
Troop 2: 6-12 Firewarriors

Fast Attack 1: Pathfinders in Devilfish (5 markerlights, 3 rail rifles)
Fast Attack 2: Pathfinders in Devilfish (5 markerlights, 3 rail rifles) - if I can afford it.

Elite 1: 3 suits (Probably Plasma/Fusion on all three, with a couple shield or gun drones, depending on points free)
Elite 2: Same
Elite 3: Same

Heavy1: Hammerhead w/ Railgun
Heavy2: Hammerhead w/ Railgun
Heavy3: 3x Sniper teams

I haven't tried piecing that together for cost yet, but I think it would be my best shot?

If he goes first and turbo boosts 20 scarabs into your face the odds are you will lose the game. Scrabs = auto win versus tau. UNLESS, you can either hide lots of squads in devil fish, or use all of your marker lights to eliminate their cover saves. If you can negate the 2+ cover, you have a chance. If not, then you are looking at alot of your army tied up for the rest of the game.

I think you can only put the iridium armor on 1 suit. Also if you have kroot models they are the cheapest and best way to tie up scarabs. My friend uses a lot of scarabs and I invested in a couple cheap squads of kroot for the sole purpose of tying them up.

Whether or not you go with the farsight option (which is a lot of eggs in one deepstriking basket that may scatter off the back table edge) deep striking all your suits behind his lines to hit his lurking warriors is a great idea.

Drop the rail rifles on the pathfinders. You have enough AP3 or better that you don't need them. You do, however, need the markerlight hits. You've listed 17 suits with a potential 50 APing shots and 9 sniper drones. You're probably covered on AP 3.

I would consider putting a positional relay on your other commander to call in the farsight death squad, but that depends on what you're going to do with the other helios (plas/fusion) squads. This also minimizes the time that the Pathfinder Fish needs to live in order to help out with the important squad's deepstrike roll. I would put multitrackers, team leaders, and (free) bonding knives on those elite plas/fusion teams.

Don't forget that with farsight you can actually win hand to hand if you play it right, and causing necrons to flee from HtH is a great way to get rid of them.

BTW, I'm guessing you're only going to be able to fit the following into your list:

2x 6 man FW squads (120)
2x 8 man pathfinder teams with devilfish (and pods) (362)
3x 3 man helios XV8 teams (573)
1x 8 man Farsight suit squad (~885 if you use 14 gun drones)
1x Minimal Shas'El commander with positional relay, I would recommend AFP, Flamer & Relay (89)

The commander will make decent bait. Lure off his scarabs and let his 'liths deepstrike wherever they want. Just keep at least the commander and one devilfish alive until you have a chance to do deepstriking. Pathfinders should markerlight for your deepstriking suits to improve BS and possibly remove cover.

Still too many points, but not much. Happy phaseout & enjoy your dinner

Rmeju

List wise, looks fine once you do what rmeju stated.

The only reason I believe my tau have lost to crons is because of scarabs (and a tatical blunder dealing with them on my part)... I have seen them tie up a single squad of suits + comander + boradsides due to Dawn of War setup.

You simply cant ignore these as tau simply because they will beat almost anything you got in HtH... Focus on them early if they are the only things on the board unless his destroyers are easier pickings (asuming the rest of his army is deep striking).

While I like the idea of deepstriking behind his lines to get at the hidden warriors I think I should point out 2 common necron tactics.

1. you deepstrike he pulls all his warriors away in a daisy chain from monolith to monolith allowing will be back rolls regardless of instant death.

2. going into rapidfire range to deal death to him puts you in rapidfire range for him to deal it back, unless you are giving farsight and company 2 shield drones each and giving them each different wargear for wound allocation magic (see my thread on that here http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/226274.page) he could shoot down that unit pretty quickly with 2-3 squads of warriors and a unit of immortals even if you dakka a whole squad in one turn he can pull that squad through the monolith to get will be back rolls so you may end up dealing with a large part of that unit anyways.

If he is pinning his hopes on 2 big units of scarabs you might be able to win a psychological edge but gibbing them quickly with pieplates from the HH just remove the coversave with markers and blast away hell anything s6 or better is instant death, (I have even used snipers drones to keep scarabs from hitting my line.) after you get the scarabs down just use your standard tactics from there.

I have no stealth suit models, so won't be using any.

Giving up the rail rifles in exchange for more markerlights might be smart - 3 extra markerlights that I wouldn't have to spend 30 points apiece on marker drones to get.

Aftersong wrote:1. you deepstrike he pulls all his warriors away in a daisy chain from monolith to monolith allowing will be back rolls regardless of instant death.

Uh, that's not how it works....the Monolith can ONLY allow (warriors in this case) to make WBB rolls IF THEY ORIGINALLY COULD, so that said, if they were killed by ID weapons, and no res orb around, not even a Monolith can get them back.

In other words: ONLY if they actually FAILED the WBB roll (meaning if they got it in the first place), then they could retry via monolith transporting. They wouldn't get a WBB roll from ID, so no WBB, and no monolith helping to revive them (unless there are non-ID wounds, then it could help that)

Another WBB note: With only 1 squad of immortals, and one squad of destroyers, if you take out the whole squad by ANY means, they can't WBB (WBB states they need one alive model with 6" or a Tomb Spider, which they don't have)

Necrons exchanging rapid fire with helios pattern Farsight bodyguard are going to die in a big hurry. Teleporting could be a problem, but that's why we like railguns for killing monoliths.

Rmeju

What is a Helios pattern bodyguard?

Remember, any flamers you have do double wounds against scarabs. If you can take a squad down to ~4 bases, even a Fire Warrior squad can hold if they don't run after the charge, it happened to me, that combat was going the whole game from turn 3 or so.

I think you should deal with the monoliths, as tau are one of the few armies that can, and they can cause havoc, as you will have quite a few units in a small area for gauss flux, which will still allow him to teleport. Just keep the broadsides spread out, but try to retain large fire-arcs.

I'm not sure about Farsight, but it should be ok with a pathfinder devilfish, and preferably a positional relay. Another problem with that is if he still has a monolith that is able to come in, he could just drop a pie plate on them and they go poof, as you would have to run to be spread out.

rmeju wrote:Necrons exchanging rapid fire with helios pattern Farsight bodyguard are going to die in a big hurry. Teleporting could be a problem, but that's why we like railguns for killing monoliths.

Rmeju

Well assuming he has 2 squads of warriors instead of 3 at 20 strong and a 10 strong unit of immortals farsight and company drop in and for gaks and giggles lets say they gib an entire warrior squad and the warrior squad fails all their WBB rolls vs the plasma (yes the fusion guns disallow wbb) realistically speaking after farsight shoots (lets even suppose marker support has them at bs5) vs a squad of 20 there are still 4 necrons left standing (11.28 wounds from plasma + 4.93 from fusion) they then get wbb vs the plasma deaths (5.64 stand up) leaving 9 in the first squad but for the sake of argument lets say the dice gods smile on you and the entire squad is killed there are still 20 warriors and 10 immortals nearbye

Warriors
40 shots at bs4 = 26.4 hits
str4 against T4 with 5's bypassing armor = 11 armor saves 2 automatic wounds from 6's
11 saves vs 3+ = 3.63 wounds + 2 autowounds
5.63 wounds

Immortals
20 shots bs4 = 13.2 hits
13.2 str5 hits vs t4 = 7.26 wounds 1.45 auto wounds
7.26 wounds vs 3+ save = 2.39 wounds + 1.45 auto wounds
3.84 wounds

Total
9.47 wounds or 4.5 dead suits
nevermind destroyer or monolith fire
(8 plasma 3 fusion shots on subsequent turns)

now taking reality into account (Lord with a res orb nearbye) I think the crons have farsight dead in 2 turns, sure they could assault to extend their life but then you run the risk of getting counter assaulted by the lord who has a powerweapon in cc

That's making quite a lot of presumptions...

1. You're presuming that all of his necrons will be in range of each other to provide WBBs.

2. You're presuming that all his warriors are in rapid fire range.

3. You're presuming I don't have drones?

4. You're forgetting that crisis suits can be equipped to spread wounds around.

5. You're also forgetting that I have the rest of my army too.

I'm not worried about one of my units having to go up against his whole army. =p But I *do* think that deep striking 3 units of elites (suits) along with an HQ consisting of another 8 suits can go a long way towards phasing out some Necrons.

Alright; I made a tentative army list and tactics for it, and posted it in my first post. Anyone with thoughts?

dashofpepper wrote:1. You're presuming that all of his necrons will be in range of each other to provide WBBs.

All he has to do is spread out his wound allocation and the surviving members of the squad will be easily within 6" that is hardly a concern

dashofpepper wrote:2. You're presuming that all his warriors are in rapid fire range.

Should he setup in a typical necron phalanx formation and/or leave one monolith on the table deepstriking the other it would be very feasible to get them all into rapidfire range. Maybe your opponent isn't skilled enough to see that deepstriking one monolith and using the other for the teleport repair is a good idea but shouldn't you plan as though he will?

dashofpepper wrote:3. You're presuming I don't have drones?

dashofpepper wrote:4. You're forgetting that crisis suits can be equipped to spread wounds around.

Aftersong wrote: unless you are giving farsight and company 2 shield drones each and giving them each different wargear for wound allocation magic

dashofpepper wrote:5. You're also forgetting that I have the rest of my army too.

With a big expensive Farsight team you wouldn't have had points for too much else in 1850 as you initially outlined. Now with the current list 3/4 of the points in your army will be waiting off the table in deepstrike. Making it possible for those scarabs/destroyers to rush in and maul your firewarriors leaving you without scoring units for the rest of the game, sure you can go for phase out but by my count he has alot of necron special rule models on the table 2 squads of 20 strong warriors, a 10 squad of immortals, 1 lord and 5 destroyers is 56, reducing that to 25% is 42 dead metal skeletons. You will be trying to achieve this while taking a plethora of gauss shots and 2 str9 ap2 pie plates every turn. It is certainly possible however I think you are leaning heavily on suits that are instakilled by the monolith particle whip with very little chance to potentially silence the monoliths.

Furthermore what if he holds his warriors and immortals in reserve to arrive via 2 deepstriking monoliths? With only 1 railgun on the table to try to deal with them might I add.

Well, I'm sure his scarabs can rush in and maul my...12 firewarriors. I'm counting on being able to table him, which is why I have so much AP1 and AP2. You have any suggestions on how to better beat this army?

Aftersong wrote:
2. going into rapidfire range to deal death to him puts you in rapidfire range for him to deal it back, unless you are giving farsight and company 2 shield drones each and giving them each different wargear for wound allocation magic (see my thread on that here http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/226274.page) he could shoot down that unit pretty quickly with 2-3 squads of warriors and a unit of immortals even if you dakka a whole squad in one turn he can pull that squad through the monolith to get will be back rolls so you may end up dealing with a large part of that unit anyways.

Solution: JSJ + Relentless.

Aftersong:

I think that while you do make some good general points, you missed a few key points specific to this particular opponent.

1. He isn't using nearly that many warriors. If the list is using roughly what was listed in the OP, then he's got points for ~20-25 warriors maybe 30 max if he takes a min size immortal squad. Not 40 or 50 warriors and a squad of 10 immortals. That's way more points than he has to spend (40 warriors + 10 immortals costs 1000 points on the button, which is way more than he has available to him).

2. I don't know if you counted drones, but I was including 10-14 gun drones. That's a lot of ablative wounds, and they get to save vs. all the regular necron fire. Also, the necrons won't have two turns to shoot at farsight, since he can fight and win in CC. He's going to get 2 rounds of shooting them, then he charges. They get one chance to EITHER shoor OR charge.

3. His opponent doesn't use very good tactics, so assuming all that tournament proven hoo-hah isn't necessarily a given. Remember, this is an amateur battle between to friendly gamers for dinner, and they both think they've got something to ninja each other for a free meal.

4. The theory we were going for didn't care what happened to the rest of his army. Everybody shoots the necrons and goes for phase out. He doesn't care about holding objectives. Either the farsight phaseout plan works or it doesn't

only real thing i can think of to sum it up:


max out on low ap, keep the fire on the warriors and destroyers, they are the only thing that matters.

take a few min sized kroot squads to throw at scarabs and keep em busy, or anything getting too close.

if the mono's are that important have 1 railhead shooting at them each turn, while a 2nd helps killing the warriors.

deploy pretty far back, as you can outrange them with ease.
in doing so you will have destroyers and scarabs leading the attack while warriors slog behind them, so it will be like fighting in waves.

Thanks for the posts - the battle is tomorrow and yes...this game is about who can ninja who. =p

We played last weekend and I used my wife's orks - he was *really* unhappy about the game turnout because he had built his list specifically to beat my Tau. We ended up having a conversation about whether he CAN make a list specifically to beat Tau or not, and we ended up both telling each other that a custom list against the others' army would whip the other person.

So tomorrow we're going to find out. =p

I put Flechette Launchers on both my Hammerhead and the Devilfish as an insulting move; I'm going to try making his scarabs assault one of them. I *did* put as much AP3 and lower (mobile) into this list as I could.

I have a total of 17 plasma guns, 12 Fusion Blasters, 4 flamethrowers (to increase wound count), 1 cyclic ion blaster, 1 Fragmentation Airbursting Launcher. I've got 3 more Rail Rifles on my pathfinders.

If we get to presume rapid fire (some of my plasma and fusion is twin-linked for suit differentiation), I have 32 plasma shots (some with rerolls), 11 fusion shots (some with rerolls) and 3 flamer templates (1 to reroll wounds).

We'll have to see whether he brings a rez orb, how he deploys, etc....but I think I'm in good shape.

Tau generally want to go first, right? I'm tempted to let him deploy first if I win to make sure that he holds his monoliths in reserve for deep-striking; anticipating a massive gun-line. Thoughts? If I'm deep striking suits and he's deep striking monoliths, I'd think I'd rather go second so that I can avoid deep striking next to his monoliths if possible.

We had our game; I posted a battle report HERE.