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Dashofpepper wrote:
Here's a fun statistic: When wraiths charge a unit of ork boyz, it takes an average of 72 attacks to bring down and keep down a single wraith.

Yes, but you are charging that unit with 460+ points. Wraiths are no more resistant to melee than other MEQ until power weapons show up. 18 attacks to put one on the ground, 36 to get one off the board, and 72 to get a causality past the portal. They are tough to kill with the full chain going, but they also don't have many wounds. It seems critical, to me at least, to keep the Wraith units together. If your opponent can split them up by focusing attacks and forcing a teleport and then splitting that unit off from the others, you are likely to start having problems.

Wraiths are decent CC units. The problem has always been the max unit size.

EDIT: As for avoiding getting swept, don't get in close combat to start with. Note that all three of the suggestions revolve around a fast unit (Scarabs, Destroyers, Wraiths), a C'tan goalie, and Monoliths. There's not much else to be done, unfortunately.

In my opinion you gotta run the Nightbringer. For one reason, Fear. Its a close combat monster. Heres my reasoning. Nobody wants to get into CC with it unless they want to sacrifice all or most of the unit. Plus its a big moving target like your the Monos that every evy squad wants to shoot at, there by diverting fire from your troops. You don't have to kill alot with the Nightbringer just keep attention of your troops allowing them to be more useful. When that thing goes charging in to a group of troops they scatter cuz they'll get torn up. I know its expensive. But I've found that I don't have to kill everything but keep my opponant from doing what he wants to do. And the Nightbringer is really good at disrupting plans for a turn or two. But thats just me.

Basically, I need to do some battle reports with my necrons. ><

They're not play ready at the moment, I took my C'tan apart, my warriors are mostly in pieces, my wraiths are not on their bases at the moment, one monolith is primed white and the other two need to be stripped / possibly disassembled and stripped.

The Grog wrote:

Dashofpepper wrote:
Here's a fun statistic: When wraiths charge a unit of ork boyz, it takes an average of 72 attacks to bring down and keep down a single wraith.

Yes, but you are charging that unit with 460+ points. Wraiths are no more resistant to melee than other MEQ until power weapons show up. 18 attacks to put one on the ground, 36 to get one off the board, and 72 to get a causality past the portal. They are tough to kill with the full chain going, but they also don't have many wounds. It seems critical, to me at least, to keep the Wraith units together. If your opponent can split them up by focusing attacks and forcing a teleport and then splitting that unit off from the others, you are likely to start having problems.

Wraiths are decent CC units. The problem has always been the max unit size.

EDIT: As for avoiding getting swept, don't get in close combat to start with. Note that all three of the suggestions revolve around a fast unit (Scarabs, Destroyers, Wraiths), a C'tan goalie, and Monoliths. There's not much else to be done, unfortunately.

I think the bigger problems wraiths have is that, for 42 points a model, you're still only T4 and no power weapon attacks. Yes, the unit is fast and CAN be good in CC (especially with the 3+ invuln against power weapons), I feel that the fact that, in the short times between assaults (assuming you can get into assaults most of the time, and still live decently far into the game), the fact that a good round of shooting can EASILY take down even 9 wraiths (which is again just 9, 3+ save wounds, and which is almost a third of your army at 1,500 points) makes them a bit risky at times, especially if they're being used as your main attacking force (like Dash's strategy).

@Dash:
Although I could probably spend a couple hours talking Necron strategy with you, I'd be interested in some clarification on a couple points if you don't mind:

-You say that, as is obvious with many armies, that an entire destroyer unit(s) could be wiped out in one good shooting phase (similar has happened to me in the past). How aren't wraiths the exact same way? Both units have a 3+ save (although wraiths WILL get it against ap1/2/3 weapons too), but wraiths have a lower toughness (and can be ID'd easier, although usually there's a res orb nearby) . I know you could say they should usually be in assault, but say if you win the assault in your turn, enemy turn they're wide open to gun down those units.

-You mentioned teleporting your wraith wing around the board via Monoliths. How? Unless you're using 3 monoliths in every game , you can't teleport all 3 units in the original wraith-wing (I say original because there's the chance of WBB rolls adding models to other units instead, but still), also wouldn't that require all 3 monoliths being fairly close together in order for the 3 units to rejoin back up?

-You said in an earlier post "Warriors are among the worst units in the Necron codex, made even worse by their mandatory inclusion into every list. The best way to avoid having them get swept is to avoid having them on the table.". How do you then cope with 360 points of your army being in reserve and, for the most part, useless most of the game? Especially when the rest of your stuff on the board consists of monoliths and the above "not hard to kill in shooting" wraith-wing.

Shooting Wraiths is almost the same a shooting assault Termis, except the Wraiths are faster and far more maneuverable. They are potentially vulnerable to massed fire, but getting all that massed fire on target isn't so simple.

The Wraths also tend to be clustered more, and I imagine he clusters his Monoliths heavily too. That list did show 3 of them.

The Grog wrote:Shooting Wraiths is almost the same a shooting assault Termis, except the Wraiths are faster and far more maneuverable. They are potentially vulnerable to massed fire, but getting all that massed fire on target isn't so simple.

Thing is, stuff like assault termies are often in transports, and, more importantly, have the 2+ save, and at LEAST a 5+ invuln too (or the dreaded 2+/3+ storm shields), and the 2+ goes a long way to making them survive more massed fire.

Eight Ball, to try answering your questions...

*disclaimer* I post this a lot - I'm NOT claiming that Necrons are awesome. I play them specifically because I think they are the worst codex available - they're my answer when people cry cheese to my DE or Orks.

1. I do take triple monoliths in every game. Before you ask what I do for lower point games (1500 or less), Its been a *long* time since I've played at that point level; tournaments are generally 1850-2,000, with 2500 for 'Ard Boyz, and an occasional 1500 point tournament, just not anywhere me. Posting points is not allowable here, but the core of my necron army is just over 1600 points - triple monoliths, triple wraith units, 20 warriors and a destroyer lord; depending on points, the Deceiver gets added, and warriors get bumped to units of 11 and 12 to make points work out.

2. Shooting can't take down wraiths if they can't see them - and my typical approach is triple raiders moving up the board with the wraiths and destroyer lord behind them, C'tan if applicable, warriors in reserve. While wraiths can certainly get shot down, taking down nine of them at the same time....well, not as easy as you are making out. My Dark Eldar are a shooty army. I've got nine venoms with twin splinter cannons each that can put out 12 shots per vehicle, 108 shots in total, averaging 11 dead marines. There are precious few army builds out there (mostly involving IG) that can outshoot my ability to deal with infantry at range - although to be honest, I wouldn't run up the table against DE, so that particular scenario isn't useful.

3. How do I cope with 360 points in reserve? The reason I say that they are a liability is because they *are* a liability. Killing warriors is what makes Necrons phase out. I hate them. Their utility to me is engaging them in the slowness of the Necron army. Monoliths travel up the field slowly (unless I'm deep-striking them). By the time my warriors come into the field, my monoliths are in midfield or beyond, and my wraiths are ready to assault. Given a choice between warriors that constitute one of my only two troop choices and are a hefty chunk my of phase out, or shooting at my wraiths (which posts here and elsewhere dictate the willingness of people to dismiss them), all I really want those warriors to do is take fire. I tend to keep one monolith close enough to pull them through if they take a beating. Yes...there's a lot of theoryhammer that could be done here with what enemy armies are packing.

4. Destroyers can get wiped out in shooting....but they can also get wiped out in assault. Both of the armies I play (DE and Orks) are fast enough to get to destroyers and eat them in close combat...whatever my Lootas and Deffkoptas haven't killed, or whatever my splinter cannons haven't mulched. Destroyers don't have the option of hiding behind monoliths to preserve their effectiveness, they need to be out shootng at stuff.

I have to emphasize that I don't believe Necrons are great - I expect to get brutalized every game, because of my own dealings against them, but continue to be pleasantly surprised.





Automatically Appended Next Post:

Eight Ball wrote:

The Grog wrote:Shooting Wraiths is almost the same a shooting assault Termis, except the Wraiths are faster and far more maneuverable. They are potentially vulnerable to massed fire, but getting all that massed fire on target isn't so simple.

Thing is, stuff like assault termies are often in transports, and, more importantly, have the 2+ save, and at LEAST a 5+ invuln too (or the dreaded 2+/3+ storm shields), and the 2+ goes a long way to making them survive more massed fire.

Terminators. Particle whips definitely get a focus on land raiders carrying thunderhammers - I don't want those meeting monoliths. A warscythe isn't enough for a land raider, and I don't want to waste my Deceiver on the land raider when I need him for the terminators inside - and obviously armour and invulnerable saves don't matter. It takes time and is difficult to get a Deceiver into close combat, but once he's there, he's happy as a peach with a 2d6 consolidate every enemy assault phase to get off another charge somewhere.

Good stuff Dash...and yeah, I suppose that some of it works out a lot better at more than 1,500 pts (it's what I just used as an example)

-Oh, about the termies, we were just discussing shooting termies down compared to shooting wraiths down, not how to deal with them


-Also, you sorta state two conflicting things here, in regards to shooting down wraiths/destroyers:

Dashofpepper, on Destroyers wrote:honestly isn't that hard to knock them ALL down in a single turn - no need to worry about WBBs. My Dark Eldar for example - if I go first, 11 destroyers are going to fall over - JUST FROM my splinter cannons.

Dashofpepper, on Wraiths wrote:While wraiths can certainly get shot down, taking down nine of them at the same time....well, not as easy as you are making out.

-Lastly, you say you usually only take 20 (give or take) in a larger battle, and sometimes(?) use them to soak up some fire.....have you, using that, run into problems with objective games?

Gah, editing to try to format properly.

In objective games, my focus is on teleporting warriors onto one or two objectives, hopefully spreading them out to hold two objectives each, and using the rest of my army to contest others.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dashofpepper wrote:In objective games, my focus is on teleporting warriors onto one or two objectives, hopefully spreading them out to hold two objectives each, and using the rest of my army to contest others.

*EDIT* And in terms of conflicting statements....as I said earlier, destroyers need to be out and visible to be effective - for them to shoot, they're getting shot back. Wraiths do not. My wraiths are either hiding behind my monoliths, in assault, or in transit between a monolith and an assault post-teleport.