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Devil Dog wrote:Percentages don't equal what happened then. Glanced me a lot more than just 2 times, and blew off my ARM on other one. Don't know what else to tell ya.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Scarabs ate my land raider and his wraiths ate two sets of devs.

So Wraiths beat Devastators. A dedicated close combat unit killed your fire support. This is nothing new.
Glancing can blow your arm off, yes. The only way it can destroy your vehicle is if it blows off every single weapon and then immobilizes it. There's a 66% chance of a Warrior hitting your vehicle, then a 16.5% chance from there of it even glancing, THEN a 33% chance of a hit causing any sort of damage. The chances are miniscule (somewhere around 3.5% if my awful mathhammer is right) and can only happen through sheer weight of fire. Also, a single weapon destroyed result isn't anything to quake about.
Finally, scarabs are good at killing vehicles. Them's the breaks. Keep your armor moving and they won't hit so hard. Shoot the scarabs with anything S6 or higher and waste them. Hell, bolter fire will chew them up. They've got lots of wounds but aren't especially durable given their low toughness and poor save.

Also, if you told me a year ago I'd be reading a thread where someone thought Necrons were overpowered I would be laughing until morning. I'm glad the codex is actually decent in this day and age.

Locclo wrote:

IcedAnimals wrote:

Devil Dog wrote:Your right. Immortals kill tanks easier than a dev squad. Shot down my beloved iron clad dreds like they were butter.

I have to ask...how? Assuming rapid fire range with 10 immortals they should be causing 2 glancing hits (they can't pen) with a 50% chance of doing nothing but shaking you.

If they are running tesla which is actually a lot more common they literally can not hurt you at all. So again, how did immortals "cut through [multiple] iron clad dreds like butter"

That would make sense, but here's the problem: 40k is not played with statistical averages. 40k is played with dice. The dice gods giveth, and the dice gods taketh away. Simple as that.

I understand "hot hands" or amazing rolling on his part. But having amazing rolling doesn't mean the codex should be considered overpowered. I have rolled my demons 5+ invuln save in some games where people joke all my daemonettes are carrying stormshields. Still doesn't mean the unit is any harder to kill than it actually is.

A unit of immortals should not do anything of any importance to a dreadnaught, They should get a single turn of firing cause two glancing hits MAYBE remove a weapon and then get charged and swept. Now Sasori made a good point. In the units of immortals there could be other things such as lords with warscythes or crypteks with lances. That is the kind of thing that you will need experience against. For example charging a dread into combat with a Warscythe lord+ squad might not be the best move since he averages a penetrating hit on each successful hit.

Anyways it sounds like you just need some experience against the army and hope your opponent doesn't get as lucky with the dice (or you being unlucky).

If you have Necron problems, add Vindicators. If this fails, you haven't added enough Vindicators.

Necron aren't considered OP for similar reasons that the IG aren't-their power is "rational", it fits in with their style of play so it doesn't irritate people as much.
Compare this to GK-army-wide power weapons, wound allocation trickery, dirt-cheap howling banshees...why!?!?!
Or BA, army-wide FNP for no apparent rational reason, and sternguards...are sternguards.

IcedAnimals wrote:

Locclo wrote:

IcedAnimals wrote:

Devil Dog wrote:Your right. Immortals kill tanks easier than a dev squad. Shot down my beloved iron clad dreds like they were butter.

I have to ask...how? Assuming rapid fire range with 10 immortals they should be causing 2 glancing hits (they can't pen) with a 50% chance of doing nothing but shaking you.

If they are running tesla which is actually a lot more common they literally can not hurt you at all. So again, how did immortals "cut through [multiple] iron clad dreds like butter"

That would make sense, but here's the problem: 40k is not played with statistical averages. 40k is played with dice. The dice gods giveth, and the dice gods taketh away. Simple as that.

I understand "hot hands" or amazing rolling on his part. But having amazing rolling doesn't mean the codex should be considered overpowered. I have rolled my demons 5+ invuln save in some games where people joke all my daemonettes are carrying stormshields. Still doesn't mean the unit is any harder to kill than it actually is.

A unit of immortals should not do anything of any importance to a dreadnaught, They should get a single turn of firing cause two glancing hits MAYBE remove a weapon and then get charged and swept. Now Sasori made a good point. In the units of immortals there could be other things such as lords with warscythes or crypteks with lances. That is the kind of thing that you will need experience against. For example charging a dread into combat with a Warscythe lord+ squad might not be the best move since he averages a penetrating hit on each successful hit.

Anyways it sounds like you just need some experience against the army and hope your opponent doesn't get as lucky with the dice (or you being unlucky).

I can see now (rereading that post) that I wasn't being clear in favor of throwing out a little snark. What I'm driving at is that while statistics will take you so far, it's not entirely surprising that in the realm of all 40k, a few games went by where someone's Necrons got absurdly lucky with dice rolls and just shredded through entire dreadnoughts. Plus, remember that if the Dread is close enough, all it takes is one lucky glance landing on a 6 or 4 (a 1/3rd chance on the damage chart) and that threat is dealt with, either for a single turn or for potentially the rest of the game.

Now I'll say that I disagree with Devil Dog, in that I'd be gobsmacked if Immortals did more damage than properly kitted-out anti-tank Devs, but I can still see how it happened. Plus, I don't recall him mentioning how many Immortals there were (I might have glossed over it in the rest of the thread). It's only 10 to one squad, but (1) you can take multiple squads and (2) it's entirely possible that more than one squad were near enough the Dread(s) to inflict some serious harm.

I'm actually kind of curious as to what people's ideas of counters are besides charging since charging against MSS has been pretty detrimental to myself on more than 1 occassion as any CC army (done it now with my GK and daemons. my IG is mech vets, I don't even know I have an assault command XD)

so far all I got for effective counters have been:

tremor crons counter -? don't roll 1-2? stay put and try to out shoot them with my CC army? (not sure how to get around this as they can basically outshoot just about everyone at 24')

MSS - don't roll 3d6 higher than a 9 or just keep shooting them? (quite difficult to out firepower the necrons at their perfered 24' range)

sweep attack - use all infantry build? (screen doesn't seem to work as well)

mind in the machine - don't use tanks (of if you do, make sure it's not carrying flamers that can kill your own infantry screen against his scarabs which you bought the flamer for anyway...)

night fighting and lightning bolts (also include solar pulses) - hope the other guy rolls poorly?

scarabs - like others have said to use templates, but what if you lack templates like GK? You still got str 6 heavy bolters though most swarm guys hug cover so you'll have to get through a 3+. Tough little buggers. As SM, you'll just have to use the plasma cannon probably or vindicator. Also infantry screen sorta helps though I've seen scarabs assault around blocking units at times. Now which do you priortize more? the wraiths or the scarabs if you got both comming at you fast?


I'm greatly interested in what other counters people have against some of these things. Alot of what you may need vs necrons unfortunately makes a mess of other things an all commers list really finds uses for. Sure you can tailor but it's kind of hard to come up with strats if the necron trick completely bones your build. It's as bad as gk vs daemons in some set ups like foot draigo vs tremor crons as pointed up on top. (usually some solar pulses and 72' str 10 pie plates just for fun)

Thunderfire cannons - useful in almost every matchup, i bring one to every game i play, regardless of the opponent, they are especially useful vs Scarabs as every hit will score 2 wounds and each wound causes instant death!

So, the op had a probably quite terrible army ( lone Landraider, 2 devsquads, ironclad dreads...), no experience fighting Necrons and we don't know how well he played, but this makes Necrons op in his mind...ok...

Joey wrote:
Or BA, army-wide FNP for no apparent rational reason, and sternguards...are sternguards.

BA get FNP for having Sanguinary Priests, which are independent character Apothecaries. They're 1 wound ICs and hemorrhage killpoints. Get into close combat or overwhelm them with fire, no big deal. It does make their squads more durable though, which can be tough. And Sternguard are overpowered to you? Really?

Tremor crons - kill the ctan if you can, if he's hiding it that's a ~250 pt monstrous creature that might never actually see combat. Don't move on the first turn against orikan. Against tremor stave shots there's only going to be 4ish in the whole army, avoid los or present them with a ton of targets at once and if he chooses vehicles just don't move them that turn, you can probably stomach infantry loses. He's giving up lancetek spots for those things, you can often play around a str4 ap- weapon that only has a real chance of hurting you if you move, you cannot play around the str8 ap2 shot alternative.

Mind shackle scarabs - don't assault with small numbers of expensive models, do assault with large numbers of cheap models. A carnifex has a good chance of punching itself to death, a squad of 5 terminators will have 20% of their strength turned back on them, mephiston will force weapon himself. A squad of 30 ork boyz or 10 assault marines really doesn't give too many sh!ts they lose 4 of their bajillion dice, just make sure your characters with the powerklaws or what have you are in the second row so the are ineligible for the base2base targeting limitation.

Sweep attack - a command barge with a scyth lord is already 180pts, it's rare to see them tooled out with defensive options like mss or sempiternal weave or a phase shifter so once the lords out of the barge bolter fire can kill him pretty easy. As for getting him out, it's a vehicle that has to fly over you to hurt you, take 2 melta guns or similar high power short range weapons to get past the skimmer flat out save and pop it.

Mind in the machine - don't get a vehicle within 18" of that dude. If he tries to get cute and use a veiltek to force him within 18", him and his squad are template bait after he gets maybe a single shot, he can always fail the 3+ test.

Night Fighting - This is probably one of the roughest tricks in the necron arsenal. If you're assault/short range focused or you have access to anti nightfight stuff like blacksun filters or acute senses then you don't much care. Maybe reserve vehicles against the stormlord because d6 str8 ap5 hits are much more threatening there than on a MEQ squad. Otherwise you need to hide, stay out of los, stick to dense terrain, pay close attention to fire lanes and what the range of his units are. Most necron stuff is 24" and the various nightfight activators are just a way to close the gap on longer range armies for the first 2 turns but there's always tremor staves, eldritch lances, doomsday cannons, heavy gauss cannons, harps, and tachyon arrows.

Scarabs - If you lack a shooting response monstrous creatures or 2+ savers will do good work here. Scarabs can't hurt t7 but anything under they'll eventually chew through but it will probably take a few turns. While they're tied up you can go about moving vehicles safely away and killing the spyders feeding the farm and other priority targets. The earlier you concentrate on them the easier they are to keep under control.

Ultimately necrons aren't strong because of any particular trick or unit, it's all the combos and synergies the codex provides. A command barge or a wraith squad or scarabs all die to focused fire or a dedicated assault but when all three are hitting your lines at about the same time it's a crisis. Do what you do against every other army, set priorities, focus targets, position to take advantage of cover and exploit ranges, abuse mobility, get on objectives, etc.

Actinium wrote:

Mind shackle scarabs - don't assault with small numbers of expensive models, do assault with large numbers of cheap models. A carnifex has a good chance of punching itself to death, a squad of 5 terminators will have 20% of their strength turned back on them, mephiston will force weapon himself. A squad of 30 ork boyz or 10 assault marines really doesn't give too many sh!ts they lose 4 of their bajillion dice, just make sure your characters with the powerklaws or what have you are in the second row so the are ineligible for the base2base targeting limitation.

Can a force weapon be used against an infected target? I was under the impression that it couldn't, because the opponent may still choose not to activate the test.

I think so, the mss entry on p81 of the cron dex says the mss controller gets to choose to use any items and wargear the controlled model has if a choice needs to be made, that might not extend to the actual psychic test though I'm not sure. I was mostly going off the reecius video where that hilariously happened though.

EDIT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTX6kilqbSo at 8:55 or so