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G. Whitenbeard wrote:Deleted

just about to chime in but guess you read the section I was trying to find.

Nemesor wrote:As far as I can see this is whining in disguise. Build a new army list and get over it

I really hope this isn't directed at me. I've got a comprehensive collection of IG and dark angels, and I'm adding all the time to my dark eldar/eldar. Not only have I already built many new army lists, but there isn't anything to get over. I love that the game is different. I hadn't played a game of 5th edition in about 10 months because of how bored I was with the game.

This is discussion. The more people who know what 6th edition is shaping up to be, the more interesting combinations get revealed and answered for.

Biophysical wrote:Shep, do you think reserve manipulation is a legitimate way to try and counter flyer lists? I play mostly guard, so I'll give examples from there:

1.) Starting only cheap infantry on the board, and leaving your firepower units off the board in hopes of ensuring shots against the Necrons.

2.) Master of the Fleet (I'm not sure if other armies can do similar things, although Allies make it possible). If you can reduce the number of fliers zooming on first turn it would make it a little easier to deal with piecemeal. Do you think it would be enough to matter?

Yeah, I think that would be a totally legit way to answer flyers. Its all going to be based on what your list composition is, in other words, reserving a weak unit is not going to make that unit stronger. But the last thing a flyer wants is to show up on-table and not see anything worth shooting at.

Even worse than that, is showing up, not seeing anything worth shooting at, then watching their targets deepstrike within 18" of them. Thats two guaranteed turns of not shooting at them.

On your master of the fleet question. That is a tough one. One of the problems with enemy reserve manipulation is that, if you have your own flyers, you may not want their flyers getting delayed, as then they get to show up after your vendettas and then shoot at them from within 18", taking a shot at killing them and then being immune to retribution. I suppose if you weren't going to be playing a reserve game at all, then -1 to their rolls would be fairly annoying. He certainly isn't as powerful as he used to be.

A Master of the Fleet ally in a marine list which tries to drop pod alpha strike might be able to table the Necron Flyer list before his flyers can come in. Some things that can work together are An IG and BA army.

Master of the Fleet to delay enemy flyers

Psyker Battle Squad to weaken resolve a unit off the table

Drop pods with at least one psyker with fear the darkness

Drop pod Sternguard. I would look for a 5 plasma and 2 heavy flamers which would combat squad upon arrival.

Mephiston to get 3 rolls on the Telepathy table to try and get the spell that removes fearless

Bastion or ADL with Icarus Lascannon for the best chance for a one shot kill on a flyer which comes in turn 2.

Roll the warlord trait in strategic command and hope for the power that hampers enemy reserves

You Might be able to incorporate these elements in a standard, more well rounded, army that can have success against other armies besides a heavy flyer list.

Well the Necron Flyer list actually is a bit broken if fielded correctly. You need a good balance of flyers and infantry.

I had test games vs mass orks, vs Death from above and vs IG Anti-list (6 vendettas, 1 hydra, 2xplasma and 2xmelta vets 2x plasma command). I won all of them though the last one was a tough fight. But fortunately my flyer list has a solid infantry section which won me the game against the far inferior guard infantry. The mass orks outmanoeuvred my scythes quite efficiently but got killed by constant immortal fire, death from above got shredded.

I have yet to encounter a list that is superior.

-Nazdreg- wrote:Well the Necron Flyer list actually is a bit broken if fielded correctly. You need a good balance of flyers and infantry.

When people say Necron Flyer SPAM, they mean like 6-9 flyers in the list. The balanced approach is better though I think, say 2 Doomscythes, 2 Nightscythes, 2 Command Barges, 2 large Wraith units, and fill the rest with Warriors, small squads for the transports and bigger ones for home objectives.

Anyway regarding the thread overall, Shep, if you want to play the ignore tactic, remember that Scythes have to move at least 18", so if you don't want to get shot to bits by them, move within 18" and they are forced to fly over you. It is actually the one weakness Necrons have; Scythes can't hover.

You don't even need to be that close to them. I don't think that gun only points straight forward.

45 degrees down and 6" up means 6" of dead zone.

True, I forgot they don't have turret weapons.

I've found that flyer-spam folds pretty easily against horde armies with any appreciable long range capability. My first 4 games of 6th were against a necron flyer spam and an ellysian flyer spam, and i found that though a lascannon or two might not do much, massed guard waiting for the flyers to trickle in can really put some hurt on.

I was using footguard, and my list has 18 lascannons and 24 autocannons in it. While spam lists have the ability to focus fire effectively due to their degree of mobility, I've found that the overall VOLUME of fire they can put out doesn't stack up when they are having to contend with numbers over quality.

/e: Nm ,misread.

Shep wrote:In my playtest games against the necron flyer spam, I first attempted to just ignore them and win through the fact that they don't have any scoring units, or any contesting units for that matter. But then I learned something. The twin linked tesla destructor is a POWERFUL gun, perfectly versitile in target choice, and extremely effective at killing everything. The death rays were much more controllable and effective than i first expected as well, many times hitting multiple vehicles per shot. In the end of that first game, my grotesque deathstar was simply removed from the table with mass shooting from immortals and all of the tesla, every ravager was dead the moment any flyer looked at it, and the venoms as well. They didn't need more than 4x5 immortals, because I was essentially tabled on the bottom of turn 5. 20 immortals walked on to two objectives, I was 'allowed' to score the third one, and he had first blood, warlord slay, and could have taken linebreaker if he had wanted to move one of the night scythes 36" and then deploy a unit. But he didn't need to, he more than doubled my VP for the massacre. He lost no models

I agree the TL tesla destructor is a powerful gun. Its not uncommon to store 5 STR 7 hits per turn with it.

The problem is that standard 5th ed lists will be crushed by that spam. If you bring 5 razorbacks with MSU in them, its going to be a spanking over hot coals. I think what were seeing here is the shift in meta from 5th edition lists to 6th edition lists. I expect things like GH spam lists to be more popular, or a bastion full of guard to be more common.

For book missions where you can get 'first blood' and 'linebreaker', flyer lists are extremely powerful. While there are things that help to combat them, tooling your list to beat flyers opens weaknesses elsewhere.

Perhaps I was not clear enough on my comments on how flyer lists will operate in tourneys. Take the Feast of Blades invitational mission packet as an example. In this packet, as well as the NOVA, flyers and units embarked on flyers do not count for zone control.

Zone control goals are primary in 1/3 of the missions and secondary in 1/3 of the missions. While the flyer spam list will do extremely well in the KP missions, and possibly objective missions, it will suffer in zone control missions. If even one GH survives from a squad, then you need to drop 3 necron squads in the zone to control it.

If your going into an event and you know that 1/3 of the missions are going to be nearly an auto-loss for you, then its hard to expect to win the tourney. You might win 2/3 of your games, but winning 2/3 of the games is not how you win the overall event. Its a great way to get to the middle of the pack -- and if your going to be middle of the pack why bring a list that will piss people off?

Great discussion, btw. Shep, you are one of the people I enjoy discussing tactics with on this forum.

Unless I'm mistaken, vehicles (and thus, fliers) and their passengers don't count for regular line-breaker either.

Jidmah wrote:Unless I'm mistaken, vehicles (and thus, fliers) and their passengers don't count for regular line-breaker either.

This wouldn't make sense to me.

labmouse42 wrote:The problem is that standard 5th ed lists will be crushed by that spam. If you bring 5 razorbacks with MSU in them, its going to be a spanking over hot coals. I think what were seeing here is the shift in meta from 5th edition lists to 6th edition lists. I expect things like GH spam lists to be more popular, or a bastion full of guard to be more common.

Glad to see somebody else say it; it seems the internet is still caught up in 5th edition and trying to make lists like they did before.

Jidmah wrote:Unless I'm mistaken, vehicles (and thus, fliers) and their passengers don't count for regular line-breaker either.

You are mistaken; all scoring or denial units count. Dedicated transports don't count, but most flyers are dedicated transports.

Well, I guess that the new buildings or the ADL can be force multipliers.
The large fortress filled with IG infantry gives me already a headache when I think about it.

I'm almost sure that vehicles and passengers can neither score nor deny objectives.

Jidmah wrote:I'm almost sure that vehicles and passengers can neither score nor deny objectives.

No dedicated transport and guys inside vehicles can't.

labmouse42 wrote:For book missions where you can get 'first blood' and 'linebreaker', flyer lists are extremely powerful. While there are things that help to combat them, tooling your list to beat flyers opens weaknesses elsewhere.

This is a common misconception. It's very difficult for flyer-heavy lists to score First Blood, because they have to deal with an entire army against the few units that they have to deploy on turn 1 before their flyers come in. Sometimes their lone units can be hidden or resilient enough to avoid this, but generally speaking a normal list with flyers included is going to be at a disadvantage against a normal list without flyers when it comes to First Blood. Further, since flyers themselves are neither scoring nor denial units, scoring Linebreaker is quite difficult for them while maintaining normal behavior, as they have to disembark units and then have those units not get killed.

Godless-Mimicry wrote:

Jidmah wrote:I'm almost sure that vehicles and passengers can neither score nor deny objectives.

No dedicated transport and guys inside vehicles can't.

Actually, Jidmah is right. Page 123 clearly indicates that all vehicles are neither scoring nor denial units; nor are any units currently embarked on a transport vehicle (dedicated or not).

Yep. Flyers of any kind (or any kind of vehicle for that matter) can not be scoring (or denial) units unless the mission states otherwise.

If Imotekh dies on Turn 1, you're going to have a bad time.

A great thread. I happen to quite heartily agree with Shep's assessment on Necron fliers. My personal opinion is that fliers can deliver quite the alpha, though of course spamming them outright breeds in certain weaknesses. Getting tabled Turn 1 for me needs to be mitigated the most. Having nothing viable to shoot at is less of a priority...If the opponent is going full reserves in an objective game sure I get less turns shooting at them, but I will use my superior mobility to contest and control the objectives I want with little they can do about it.

Using Rhinos to block LoS to the closest model is a flash of inspiration. Necrons lack the kind of models that can do this effectively though I think our mobility of transports makes up for this quite well. Our solution to Deathstars IMO is to simply hit them fro an unexpected angle with a unit or 2 of Deathmarks and a couple of Despair teks. Watch as the support unit for that Beat-stick IC melts away and leaves him vulnerable to low AP guns or decent assault from a dedicated unit.

What I plan on doing (and I'm hoping to get some feedback here as to whether people think it's viable or not) is using my fliers as my hard hitting alpha strikers (3 Doom Scythes and 2 Night Scythes with Deathmarks and attached Despair Teks). The foot contingent needs primarily survivability so I plan on taking several blocks of Warriors with Zahndrekh. Possibly a few Crytpeks and a D-lord thrown in too for protection from assaults.

And a quick question. In the "Big Guns Never Tire" mission can Doom Scythes score? A page reference will do as I (perhaps mistakenly) remember a reference to fliers never scoring but can't find it. I could be confusing it with the rule that states vehicles can't score or deny though.

The Strange Dude wrote:

G. Whitenbeard wrote:Deleted

just about to chime in but guess you read the section I was trying to find.

Yeah, my bad. One should always make sure one knows what he is talking about before chastising someone else for not knowing what they are talking about.

Whoops

Necrons themselves have one of the strongest Deathstars in the game, at least on paper.

Overlord, weave, scythe, res orb, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Cryptek, despair, veil or Obyron

I would be very interested to see if the infamous Harlie star or Nob biker deathstars can hold up to this in assault.

DarthDiggler wrote:Necrons themselves have one of the strongest Deathstars in the game, at least on paper.

Overlord, weave, scythe, res orb, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Lord, weave, scythe, MSS
Cryptek, despair, veil or Obyron

I would be very interested to see if the infamous Harlie star or Nob biker deathstars can hold up to this in assault.

Don't forget to add the Chronometron. I think they add so much to a deathstar for the Necrons.

I'm new can somebody explain what deathstar is because i hear it allot and i don't know what it is.

A unit that is extremely durable and also very killy. Usually it has so many points invested in it that very few units can reliably compete with it. Think something like 700-1200 points

Deathstar is an analogy to the star wars fable.

It is a traditional fable repeated down from generation to generation which started a long, long time ago.
Maybe for Canada it started far, far away, for you to have heard about it.

Yeah, the Deathstar is a giant black thing that makes Leia cry. It even shoots lasers and blows up planets.

In 40k it is usually a very powerful unit that is hard to kill. Most Deathstars specialize in hand to hand combat.

 Shep wrote:

Every army except daemons and CSM can take a rune priest, a farseer with runes of warding or has shadow in the warp.

Templars can't either.

 Shep wrote:

It would be a simple fix for GW, but I'm not sure they are the kind of company that would make that change in an errata yet. I'm hoping they are, but until then, nob bikers, grey knight paladins, and any multi-wound unit that contains independent characters is going to be stretching wounds just like before. A list of some eyebrow raisers.

I don't see why people think this is an oversight, Paladins would hardly be worth 55 points a piece if they couldn't spread wounds around.

I think you're undervaluing Paladins. They're 15 points more expensive than most normal terminators and (IMO as a Tyranid player) vastly better.

I charge TH/SS stars all the time and can win.
I haven't ever won a combat with a Paladin star.

Yeah nobs need that +4 look out sir. Otherwise they're just slightly better ogryn.