Old INDEX Necron 8th Tactica - link to new codex tactics thread in OP

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**Odrankt**

Hey guys, I need some help.

I have a game tomorrow against my brother. He will be playing a list called "Tzeentch Flying Circus"
the list contains;

Spoiler:

any idea on how to counter this obvious smite-spam? No forge world allowed so my only way of deny the witch is with Sypders.

**Actinium**

I've never actually read the entry for The Changeling before, that's actually a pretty good argument for deathmarks but it would take 12 to kill him from 13"+.

Basically you can shoot at magnus or the lord of change or the chariots from turn 1 with heavy hitters like ddarks or heavy ds but the only way to target the sub 10 wound guys including the 2 deamon princes who will really tear your army apart is by first clearing out the horrors screening them. Our best way to clear out hordes of low armor save units is tesla, except as long as The Changeling is on the board everything on that list gains a -1 to hit modifier which isn't just 1 more miss result on a dice, it also means it's impossible to get tesla exploding 6s (or with MWBD it's only a normal chance).

Although a gauss pylon from forgeworld would be nice for instantly pasting magnus, i think your best bet is a mix of warriors, scarabs, and doomsday arks. None of those are extra crippled by the -1 to hit modifier and all of them have a big load of wounds with a meh armor save which will waste most of the value of mortal wounds from smite spam. Gloom prisms aren't really great here, there's so many psychic powers that maybe denying 1 or 2 of them won't noticeably curb the damage output and spyders are pretty good smite targets. Keep your scarabs within 2" of your warrior phalanx so none of the flying monsters have a place to land behind them to charge the inner units which will give you at least one more turn to fall back and shoot. You don't really need the ark's big stand still cannon shot since nothing is over t7 and almost all their saves are invulnerable so any ap over -2 is wasted so don't be afraid to move them around to get use out of the flayer arrays or to split up your forces so the units hiding in the horrors with their slower 6" move can't chase both.

**skoffs**

Actinium wrote:
I've never actually read the entry for The Changeling before, that's actually a pretty good argument for deathmarks but it would take 12 to kill him from 13"+.

Why would Deathmarks be shooting from 13"+ away? Their ability requires them to be within 9-12".

Also, the best answer to inv saves is mortal wounds and Tesla... which ironically, the Tesseract Vault has plenty of both (not necessarily saying it's a good idea to take, just that it might be worth considering if you had the option).

**Actinium**

The 9-12" range only applies to ethereal interception, their anti deep strike deep strike, which doesn't apply here. Here they just use regular hunters from hyperspace deep strike and they land 13+" away because that list is taking 45 horrors explicitly to protect its sub 10 wound characters so there's no way in hell the changeling isn't wrapped tight in the center of that far outside rapid fire range.

If you don't kill the changeling with sniper fire then every unit in that army has a daemon and tzeentch keyword tags so they all get -1 to hit if they're within 9" of the changeling, which means no exploding 6s for tesla weapons. A vault's tesla spheres go from getting 20 hits a turn to getting 10 hits a turn. Also the horrors are resilient because they split into more horrors when they die and the owning player gets to allocate losses to the smallest horrors first, so their model count will always remain low and seismic assault won't really be good against them.

**skoffs**

Actinium wrote:
The 9-12" range only applies to ethereal interception, their anti deep strike deep strike, which doesn't apply here. Here they just use regular hunters from hyperspace deep strike and they land 13+" away because that list is taking 45 horrors explicitly to protect its sub 10 wound characters so there's no way in hell the changeling isn't wrapped tight in the center of that far outside rapid fire range.

Ah, gotcha.

And of course the only thing that could effectively counter that kind of combo is the thing we barely have available to us (flamers).
Wonderful.
:/

**Kuguar6**

DMs for chaneling killing is good idea. Even only for scare your opponent.
You can spam scarabs - a lot o W counter smite, a lot of hit counter inv.
You can take nightbringer - he was super counter for deamon prince and Magnus.
I won with list like this with immo tesla spam but opponent dont have chanelling. Keep in mind that chanelling have only 9" range aura and you push him with DMs so you can shoot into target without -1 hit. Especialy with long range DDA.
If you take a lot of troops think also about Anrakyr for counter cc atacks.

**torblind**

skoffs wrote:
^
Seems like a cool tool, but I think I ran into a problem.
I tried putting in the stats for Tesla Immortals with MWBD and the top armor save / toughness boxes all just went black.

You needed to actually punch in AP 0 , I changed that now

T.

**skoffs**

torblind wrote:
http://www.dice-hammer.com

Punch in the weapon options for units you'd like to compare, and then toggle forth and back between groups etc.

Wait, is this right?

12 Tesla Tomb Blades vs 12 Gauss Tomb Blades.
Against T4 Sv3+ at 12":

Spoiler:

- the Tesla ones are putting out 8.89 wounds
- the Gauss ones are putting out 3.56 wounds

?
I thought the Gauss would be better up close.

If this is accurate, why would anyone ever take Gauss Tomb Blades?

**torblind**

AP should be -2, not +2

**skoffs**

torblind wrote:
AP should be -2, not +2

Lol, thanks
(how did I not see that?)

Yes, 14.22 wounds sounds MUCH better!

**torblind**

I considered disabling positive APs all together, but.. you really never know what someone might need. Something else that would be interesting is to consider confidence intervals of damage outputs, ie how likely is it to score more than X, thats often what you need to consider in-game. Not sure how to best fit all that into the current view.

**skoffs**

It's a great start, by all means, keep thinking up ways to integrate advanced functions.

Back to the original point I was after,
When trying to figure out Immortals + Night Scythes vs Tomb Blades,

This is 20 Gauss Immortals coming out of 2 Night Scythes:

Spoiler:

And this is roughly equal points 13 Gauss Tomb Blades:

Spoiler:

Not taken into account is the TBs cover ignoring upgrade, so it may increase their damage output.

Regardless, they look pretty even.
The Night Scythes have the edge over Hordes, slightly.

**torblind**

he night scythe immortals are a drop-once force to control a portion of the board, while the tomb blades, being sturdier with W2 and shootier this edition, albeit more expensive, are a dynamic shooting force to pursue faster game play (faster enemies or whenever zapping across the field is important).

Tactically very different things.

The tomb blades being that much expensive, it's important to capitalize on their strengths, which I think will be more situational and tactically harder. Perhaps better against things like Harlequins or DE that zap around the field too.

**davethepak**

torblind wrote:
he night scythe immortals are a drop-once force to control a portion of the board, while the tomb blades, being sturdier with W2 and shootier this edition, albeit more expensive, are a dynamic shooting force to pursue faster game play (faster enemies or whenever zapping across the field is important).

Tactically very different things.

The tomb blades being that much expensive, it's important to capitalize on their strengths, which I think will be more situational and tactically harder. Perhaps better against things like Harlequins or DE that zap around the field too.

This ^

We have to beware the trap of mathhammer. Units are rarely identical in what they can do. Of course, stats are always good input - but how are you going to use that unit.

Played a game last night with my crons - very close game against a solid tau list. We decimated each other, but I managed to win by working objectives well.

A few observations;
Warrior blob with cryptek - he stopped shooting at it after a while. This is both good and bad. Bad, because it was a nice bullet sponge, good because I maneuvered a huge blob around different areas they needed to be (I deliberately maneuvered to get objectives somewhat midfield).

Overlord - mwbd is awesome - but overlords are decent in CC, so its hard to get them where they need to be.

Quantum shielding - this really causes other players to rethink everything. The hammerheads stopped shooting at my vehicles with QS (or switched to blast rounds) and it really threw off his game.

Deathmarks - they did not do the damage I was hoping, but they did influence how the other player did his deep strikes. I would not bother with 5, bring 10.

Cover - if you manage to get a 10 man unit of deathmarks or immortals in cover, they are very hard to get out of there. very nice.

Tomblades - very useful due to their speed and flexibility. oh, and they shoot well too....

Monolith - that was a lot of points, but it dominated the game. The nerf to shooting is harsh, but it is super resilient. Even melta's need a 4+ to wound. Pure numbers wise, the damage it did was not enough to merit its points cost, but .... drop it in the front lines and you then control the pace of the middle game. This is a very valuable asset - and no mathhammer can measure it.

Crons are a lot of fun this edition, although I wish we had more psychic defense (and need a faq on the range for the spider).

(also had a stalker and a DDA - they were both awesome, but most people know that....).

**torblind**

It seems you know your way around the Tau - did he do any tactical errors against your necron force? (apart from the perhaps obvious things that he learned during the match?)

**davethepak**

torblind wrote:
It seems you know your way around the Tau - did he do any tactical errors against your necron force? (apart from the perhaps obvious things that he learned during the match?)

I play tau as well, so it was a very interesting game.

Errors;
* Early on he did not focus fire as much as necessary , but after a while his target priority was very good.
* Also, there was an instance where it was pretty clear I was going to charge one of his units on my next turn - he should have charged me. That would have prevented me from shooting with my full BS, and he could have at least gone first. This is a very common mistake in 8th however, and while my buddy is a very good player - he is still just learning 8th.
* The mission was "contact lost" and making sure you have objectives is very important in that one - he did not focus on the objectives enough early game.

I made a couple of errors as well, and one of them (I left my warlord exposed as the closest character) he failed to take advantage of.

Crons are pretty good - we just don't have a lot of units for the points - and our infantry are very slow. Units that can MOVE are essential for taking (or pushing enemies off) objectives.

**cheesedupree**

I hope that Maelstrom style missions become the standard - places more of a value on tactically flexible units and reduces the effectiveness of pure mathhammer lists.

davethepak - were you running Gauss or Tesla on your TBs? currently assembling a bunch of them at the moment, struggling to decide which to go with. Might have to bite the bullet and magnetise.

**davethepak**

cheesedupree wrote:
I hope that Maelstrom style missions become the standard - places more of a value on tactically flexible units and reduces the effectiveness of pure mathhammer lists.

Agreed. give a lot more depth of play than the "just kill the other guy".

davethepak - were you running Gauss or Tesla on your TBs? currently assembling a bunch of them at the moment, struggling to decide which to go with. Might have to bite the bullet and magnetise.

I was running gauss. I am still testing out the gauss vs. tesla numbers, but overall feel the gauss is a bit better for my needs.

My tomblades are magnetized so they can be either - although to be honest, I have not painted all of the tesla guns.
On a side note - they are custom - I converted them from OLD necron destroyers (yes, the 'lawn chair" guys) before we had a tomb blade model.
I removed the gun from the old destroyer, and put in a weapon mount, and magnitized the gauss weapon to it (I now have the gauss gun bits from the new models).

Once the new models came out, I did not like of look of them, and just kept converting my old ones.

**skoffs**

So Silver Tide and Quantum Shield-Wall.
We know these work. Cool.
But has anyone else had success with any other kinds of builds?
I'd love to get something speedy with mass Destroyers / Tomb Blades / Praetorians, but cost of model combined with the prevalence of multi-damage weapons means I just have not been able to find anything that works...

**torblind**

davethepak wrote:
torblind wrote:
he night scythe immortals are a drop-once force to control a portion of the board, while the tomb blades, being sturdier with W2 and shootier this edition, albeit more expensive, are a dynamic shooting force to pursue faster game play (faster enemies or whenever zapping across the field is important).

Tactically very different things.

The tomb blades being that much expensive, it's important to capitalize on their strengths, which I think will be more situational and tactically harder. Perhaps better against things like Harlequins or DE that zap around the field too.

This ^

We have to beware the trap of mathhammer. Units are rarely identical in what they can do. Of course, stats are always good input - but how are you going to use that unit.

Played a game last night with my crons - very close game against a solid tau list. We decimated each other, but I managed to win by working objectives well.

A few observations;
Warrior blob with cryptek - he stopped shooting at it after a while. This is both good and bad. Bad, because it was a nice bullet sponge, good because I maneuvered a huge blob around different areas they needed to be (I deliberately maneuvered to get objectives somewhat midfield).

Would you bother with a cryptek with the warriors next time?

**davethepak**

torblind wrote:
davethepak wrote:
torblind wrote:
he night scythe immortals are a drop-once force to control a portion of the board, while the tomb blades, being sturdier with W2 and shootier this edition, albeit more expensive, are a dynamic shooting force to pursue faster game play (faster enemies or whenever zapping across the field is important).

Tactically very different things.

The tomb blades being that much expensive, it's important to capitalize on their strengths, which I think will be more situational and tactically harder. Perhaps better against things like Harlequins or DE that zap around the field too.

This ^

We have to beware the trap of mathhammer. Units are rarely identical in what they can do. Of course, stats are always good input - but how are you going to use that unit.

Played a game last night with my crons - very close game against a solid tau list. We decimated each other, but I managed to win by working objectives well.

A few observations;
Warrior blob with cryptek - he stopped shooting at it after a while. This is both good and bad. Bad, because it was a nice bullet sponge, good because I maneuvered a huge blob around different areas they needed to be (I deliberately maneuvered to get objectives somewhat midfield).

Would you bother with a cryptek with the warriors next time?

That is a VERY interesting question. Many have run the analysis on instead of a cryptek, just another 10 warriors.

I would say yes - I would include them.

A few reasons;
* The lack of the cryptek, and the player would have focus fired on the unit, and wiped it out. Eliminating the offensive and area holding capability of the blob. An extra 10 warriors would have been killed easily.
* not all armies are the same - this this opponent did not shoot many high AP weapons at the blob, other armies may have more plasma, etc. thus the 5++ would be of more use.
* This was tau - they did not assault me (some tau do) - but in a game where assaults WILL happen, the blob is very critical - it can screen a lot due to its size, it can slow down a nasty assault unit, or even tie it up (or perhaps even defeat it - the MWBD +1 counts in cc as well). Orikins invul even happens in CC - with a 5++ and RP on a 4+ warriors can even tank THSS termies.
* an overlord is a decent beatstick - for that unit that gets too close (in the end of our game, I charged one troublesome tau unit that I could not shoot out of cover and killed it in assault) or if you need to deal with a deep striking unit he can handle.
* I usually don't use a generic cryptek - I like the extra abilities that come with others like Orikian or szeras or even toholk the blinded. I feel their extra utility is an affordable bonus.

Regardless of my reasons - I do acknowledge that the people who prefer more warriors to cryptek units are not wrong - I am sure their reasons work for them - at this point, or at least until more experience changes my reasoning, I am going to keep the overlord and cryptek (again, usually a named cryptek).

**Klowny**

torblind wrote:
davethepak wrote:
torblind wrote:
he night scythe immortals are a drop-once force to control a portion of the board, while the tomb blades, being sturdier with W2 and shootier this edition, albeit more expensive, are a dynamic shooting force to pursue faster game play (faster enemies or whenever zapping across the field is important).

Tactically very different things.

The tomb blades being that much expensive, it's important to capitalize on their strengths, which I think will be more situational and tactically harder. Perhaps better against things like Harlequins or DE that zap around the field too.

This ^

We have to beware the trap of mathhammer. Units are rarely identical in what they can do. Of course, stats are always good input - but how are you going to use that unit.

Played a game last night with my crons - very close game against a solid tau list. We decimated each other, but I managed to win by working objectives well.

A few observations;
Warrior blob with cryptek - he stopped shooting at it after a while. This is both good and bad. Bad, because it was a nice bullet sponge, good because I maneuvered a huge blob around different areas they needed to be (I deliberately maneuvered to get objectives somewhat midfield).

Would you bother with a cryptek with the warriors next time?

I feel 20 warriors properly supported is a nice shooting block, and a cryptek is better than a lord every time. Sure the 5+ will rarely come into play, but 4+ RP is way better than RR fail Ld tests.

**skoffs**

Turn one deep striking Flayed Ones into cover in your opponent's back field as a distraction.
(plus setting up for coordinated turn two blitz with Immortals coming out of Night Scythes)
Viable tactic or not worth it?

**torblind**

With orikan, would you strive to make him support 2 infantry units with his 6" bubble, or would you worry less about that and try to unleash his cc potential whenever there's a chance?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

skoffs wrote:
Turn one deep striking Flayed Ones into cover in your opponent's back field as a distraction.
(plus setting up for coordinated turn two blitz with Immortals coming out of Night Scythes)
Viable tactic or not worth it?

Would you risk 2 units in tomb world and 2 night scythes on board? What about a monolith as an added distraction and emergency gateway for tomb world?

**skoffs**

A monolith is a little expensive for a distraction unit...
If I were to take a monolith I'd want a decent portion of my list running support for it. Probably end up doing a Deceiver Bomb to maximize the alpha strike.

**davethepak**

Turn one deep striking Flayed Ones into cover in your opponent's back field as a distraction.
(plus setting up for coordinated turn two blitz with Immortals coming out of Night Scythes)
Viable tactic or not worth it?

Viable if it works with your list. The flayed ones need a lot of bodies to not get killed - while they are decent assault units they are no korn berzerkers.

A monolith is a little expensive for a distraction unit...
If I were to take a monolith I'd want a decent portion of my list running support for it. Probably end up doing a Deceiver Bomb to maximize the alpha strike.

Well, above you mention "Night Scythes" as in two - two Night Scythes are only a few points shy of a monlith.

I think the scythes may be more useful in their mobility, but a monolith is quite the force on the table.

Finally, regarding the Monolith. No amount of math hammer or "effeciency" can show its effect in a game - you have to actually play with it.

Give it a whilr, and see what you think.
(in all of the tactica forums, I see way to much estimating and not enough 'doing' - nothing replaces actual in game experience).

**skoffs**

Alright,
For those people who have used their Monoliths in game, how did it do?
What was it's main purpose when you took it?
How would you rate it's performance compared to other units you might have been able to take for the same points?

**Draco765**

skoffs wrote:
So Silver Tide and Quantum Shield-Wall.
We know these work. Cool.
But has anyone else had success with any other kinds of builds?
I'd love to get something speedy with mass Destroyers / Tomb Blades / Praetorians, but cost of model combined with the prevalence of multi-damage weapons means I just have not been able to find anything that works...

Our store has had a change in who is running the events and he is going to be running the tournaments using the Eternal War missions or at 2000.

I was thinking of doing something like this:

LoW Detachment:
Gauss Pylon: Gauss Annihilator, Tesla Arc

Outrider Detachment:
Destroyer Lord: Staff of Light
Cryptek: Staff of Light

3x Destroyer, Heavy Destroyer
3x Destroyer, Heavy Destroyer
3x Destroyer, Heavy Destroyer

Sentry Pylon: Heat Cannon
Sentry Pylon: Gauss Exterminator
Sentry Pylon: Gauss Exterminator

(1988)

Might not win much, but it is a list that people will not want to be sitting anywhere near objectives within my fire range.

**vipoid**

skoffs wrote:
Turn one deep striking Flayed Ones into cover in your opponent's back field as a distraction.
(plus setting up for coordinated turn two blitz with Immortals coming out of Night Scythes)
Viable tactic or not worth it?

Wouldn't it be better to deep strike them on turn 2? Otherwise, the enemy can focus them down on turn 1 and be ready to deal with the immortals on turn 2.

**torblind**

Not much for hordes in there

Automatically Appended Next Post:

vipoid wrote:
skoffs wrote:
Turn one deep striking Flayed Ones into cover in your opponent's back field as a distraction.
(plus setting up for coordinated turn two blitz with Immortals coming out of Night Scythes)
Viable tactic or not worth it?

Wouldn't it be better to deep strike them on turn 2? Otherwise, the enemy can focus them down on turn 1 and be ready to deal with the immortals on turn 2.

There are definitely some timing challenges to overcome. Shouldn't risk too much on a 9" charge, may have to weather a turn of shooting to move closer to charge next turn. Should probably zap in more units than just one to force him to make some choices